


the best of me

by hylander



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, M/M, Pining, eliott is 26, lucas and the others are 24
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-04-08 09:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19104652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hylander/pseuds/hylander
Summary: "If anything bad happens I flush the rings, I leave my bestman spot to Baz, and I fly back to Paris."OR. Eliott and Lucas have never worked up the courage to actually make a move, and thus spent years dancing around each other without ever acknowledging their feelings. However, an engagement party gone a little too wild, an hotel room and a very bad idea might be all it takes to make everything blow up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi everyone! 💕😘  
> i'm super excited to start this new friends-to-lovers AU and i hope you'll like it. This chapter is more of a prologue to introduce you to their relationship, i hope you won't mind this little teaser 🤗

 

****

_**June 2015** _

**LUCAS**

**Today** 18:44

 

dude i finally got 5min to read what you sent

your miND

you think so?

idk, i feel like it might sound too dramatic

~~i already got a~~

~~i’m already the drama~~

POLARIS was dramatic

i should have never told you about this

bold of you to assume i’d have never found out about it

no seriously, your intake on that adam/eve thing is awesome

careful Lallemant you’re overdoing it

doubting my taste?

only a little ;)

fuck off i have GREAT taste

i can come up with ten examples of why i’m right to be scared

starting with your beloved sweatpants

that’s what i get for being nice to you?

you hurting my feelings?

~~:D~~

stop pouting already

i do what i want

how do you even know i’m pouting

i could be doing yoga and being extremely relaxed

ahaha no you’re not

you don’t knOW

i've known you for eight years, i do know

whatever

another particularly intense writing session tonight then?

nah, I’m going to some party at Alex’s school

wanna join?

i can’t

apparently staying home a friday night for the third week in a row is a big no no

~~who said~~

what are your plans then?

yann set me up for a date

~~ah~~

~~oh oka~~

~~so you’re dating now~~

and who’s the lucky guy?

a friend of arthur’s

i don’t really know him but he seems nice

yann says i can’t roll with grindr forever

wise words

easy for you to say people fight for you

~~doesn’t mean I care~~

~~i’d fight for you~~

what can i say ;) i ain’t complaining

anyway, be careful

yes sir

 

 

 

 

_**March 2016** _

**LUCAS**

**Today** 9:41

i’m never drinking again

my head hurts so fucking much

you’re still able to write full sentences without mixing letters

i’m taking that as a good sign

take an efferalgan ahaha

they’re too far

can you come and get them for me? ;(

i can’t come right now i’ve got lots of stuff to do for uni

ask idriss to come and kiss it better

~~i don’t want~~

~~i don’t want idriss I miss y~~

idriss can die

it’s his fault i'm in this state

because you drunk too much?

i did drink too much

that’s a fair point

but it was to pretend that i was too drunk to talk with the girl he tried to set me up with

wait since when idriss is doing shit like this

~~since i told him~~

~~i told him to fuck off about~~

i don’t know

**i** don’t think he’ll try again tbh

why?

i threw up

what, right now? you okay?

no last night

i threw up on the girl

you threw up on a girl

i threw up on the girl

…

you fucking know you’ll never live this one down?

don't worry she promised the same

tho she looked mildly scary

a lot more than mildly actually

i think i just broke a rib

what?

oh ffs stop laughing

i'm very very sick

you’re just drunk, hangover never killed anyone

drama queen

anyway, i gotta go

stay hydrated and get some sleep

can i call you later?

if i’m still alive i mean

what do you think duh

ofc

 

 

_**May 2017** _

**LUCAS**

**Yesterday** 14:56

 

idriss called me

he told me what happened

 

look, i know you don't want to talk right now

and it's fine, i totally get it

 

**Yesterday** 18:01

 

i just want you to know that i'm here

i will always be, remember?

 

**Yesterday** 19:36

it's gonna be okay

i promise

 

**Today** 07:44

i told anaëlle to fuck off

i need you

i’m sorry

on my way

 

 

_**September 2017** _

**LUCAS**

**Today** 11:31

wait wtf happened with will?

he gone

where?

his mother country i guess

‘to fuck himself’ isn’t an available option on a GPS

wanna expand?

i want to drink and not talk about him

i can do that

we can do that

~~he didn’t deserve~~

 

_**June 2019** _

 

**LUCAS**

**Today**  17:14

 

remind me again why Yann couldn't wait to come back for his engagement party?

he's your best friend you should know him well enough by now

he said it'd be fun

but we're literally travelling to spain for a weekend

we ALL live in paris isn't that cool enough?

you haven't been out of town for months

maybe years at this point

i have tons of work

and i've got everything i need here

well, not this weekend

c'mon it IS gonna be fun

fine

but if anything bad happens i flush the rings

i leave my bestman spot to baz

and i fly back to paris

why are you tell ME this?

i'm not the one getting married

...

bc i won't have the balls to tell that to yann

you're such a softie ;) 

fuck off

come over i need some help to start packing

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your nice feedbacks on that teaser and thank you for bearing with me till now 🤗💕

Lucas had never truly believed that marriage would be something that could happen to him.

Or to any of his friends, for that matter.

It was something vaguely intimidating, that they occasionally joked about but never took seriously enough to consider it.  _It’s not like we’re gonna get married_ , he would scoff whenever his friends showed any interest in the new protagonist of his dating life — who never stuck around long enough to even think about it anyway. Marriage wasn’t  _real_. They were still in their twenties, they were still meeting up for predrinks and playing video games until ungodly hours.

Lucas often forgot to lock the door before going to sleep. He sometimes considered candies, potato chips or spoonful of Nutella to be actual meals. He had no idea what was a tax stamp, what was his social security number, who the hell was his emergency contact (did he even have one?), and on the last round of the Presidential Elections the weather was just too good to bother waiting in line to vote for people he didn’t even know — nor cared about. He hated wine, even the fancy ones, didn’t like Champagne, and sitting on a chair was a challenge in itself at work because his first instinct was always to twist his legs at weird angles. He had been gifted a Pikachu Onesie a couple of years ago as a joke present for his birthday and he sometimes liked to wear it during winter because it was warm and comfy and nobody had to know about it. He still cart-surfed down the empty aisle at the supermarket, still felt like the cashier judged him whenever he bought condoms, and he had survived a running nose for a full year because he had dragged taking a doctor appointment.

Marriage? No, not happening.

So there was really no logical reason as to why he would find himself buckling up, in a plane, on the way to Barcelona, one fine July morning. Well, at least he didn’t have any a week ago.

It was precisely two days after a wave of heat had fallen upon Paris. In the span of twenty-four hours, the thermometers had reached well over 30°C, and effectively turned Lucas’ flat, along all the other buildings in the city, in some sort of furnace where you had trouble breathing at all. He should have known that it was the sign that something very weird would happen. Last time there had been seven centimeters of snow was the same day he had found out one of his now-exes was sending nudes to someone else, and one particularly rainy evening, while the Seine was already overflowing its banks, his dad had called to tell him that he wanted him to meet his new girlfriend.

So technically, yes, he should have known something weird would happen, the very moment he had exited his air-conditioned office at 5 in the afternoon, only for the dry summer heat to hit him with the strength of a sledgehammer. Yet, it wasn’t until three hours later, when his best friend called him via Skype all the way from Barcelona, that Lucas started thinking something fishy was happening. And definitely, marriage was  _not_  on the shortlist of things he’d have thought about.

“You  _did what_?” he had blurted out, nearly dropping the plastic spaghetti jar he had just picked up from the kitchen elements, spinning around to face his best friend through the screen with wide eyes.

“I proposed,” Yann had repeated diligently, very proud of the emotion he had just caused. “And Nola said yes.”

On the moment, Lucas hadn’t been sure of what to say.

A week later, he still had no idea.

Apparently, though, he was the only one, if everyone else’s reaction had been any indication. Ever since the others had received the news, boys and girls had all been  _literally_ buzzing. Basile and Arthur had created a groupchat five minutes after Yann had called them, to gather as many embarrassing material as it was possible to dig for whatever thing he had planned for the wedding, while Daphné had taken over the organization of the trip with Nola, since they had all been invited to celebrate with them in Barcelona for a three-day weekend.

Don’t get him wrong, Lucas would have been  _thrilled_ to get an opportunity like this one, considering the fact that you could make fried-eggs on the sidewalks and that he hadn’t had a proper night of sleep in days because he felt like he was suffocating whenever he laid down. But apparently the stars had aligned to mess it all up, and that was the exact reason why he was forced to fly on Saturday morning, an entire day after everyone else had already flocked in Barcelona — save for Emma.

“Dude, I had to literally  _fight_  to get this weekend off, don’t even get me started,” she had groaned while they were taking possession of their seats. “Emilie was a total bitch, like apparently it’s rude to ask her to switch shifts when her kid is sick. What do I know? How am I supposed to know that her stupid kid’s got fever? I’m not a psychic.”

Lucas snorted, leaning back against the backrest of his seat. “Maybe she dropped clues and you didn’t hear. Not the first time it’d happen.”

Emma pulled a face. “Rude.”

Lucas shook his head a little. The plane was filling itself with other passengers surely taking off for weeks, instead of a short weekend. Until the middle of the week, he had been set to fly on Friday morning, and he had already made plans to meet up with everyone else at the gate in Orly Airport. But on Wednesday, his boss, Julie, had barreled into the small office he was sharing with an intern to inform him that she had an emergency situation and wouldn’t be available on Friday.

“I’ll need you to cancel your plans that day, I need someone to keep the firm open,” she had said, and Lucas had almost started complaining out loud.

“What about Bérénice?”, he had tried, helplessly gesturing at the empty desk of the intern.

Julie had grimaced. “I’m sorry but I don’t trust her enough to give her full authority. Clients will come to retrieve contracts and she’s not familiar with the whole process. I’m sorry.”

Before he could even protest she had disappeared through the door to her own office, and Lucas had been left to stare begrudgingly at his computer screen with the feeling of having been betrayed on a deep, deep level. He had always gotten along rather well with Julie, ever since he had started working in that architect firm, but right now he wanted to murder her with his bare hands. Or maybe just set the firm on fire. In the end, Alexia, who had managed to score her day off last minute had exchanged her plane ticket with him, so at least he didn’t have to pay another 145€ for nothing, which was probably still better a consolation that nothing.

Still.

“Don’t you find it weird that Yann’s getting married?”, he said after a while.

Emma turned a blank look on him as she glanced up from her phone. She pondered the question. “Dunno. I mean, if he feels like it…”

Lucas gave her a face. “C’mon. We both know he’s not exactly… eh,  _the_   _best_  at relationships,” he said emphasizing the two words with a pointed look.

Emma shrugged, waving slightly. “It’s one of those things you never know if you’re good at until you tried. Frankly, what’s the worst that could happen? A divorce never killed anybody.” She widened her eyes slightly then winced when she looked up at Lucas’ clearly annoyed face. “I mean, it’s not that big of a deal until kids come around and-”

“Whatever,” he huffed. His parents had divorced years ago. In the meantime he had grown up and mostly gotten his shit together, so it was safe to say he was mostly over it. “He’s your ex. How many times did you guys start it all over? I’ve lost count.”

“Are you trying to make me freak out to hide the fact that  _you’re_  freaking out?” she snickered.

“I’m just saying that three years ago no one would have bet a penny on the two of you waving hello.”  _And certainly not more than that_ , he added to himself. It was frankly the understatement of the year. Not only Emma and Yann had started talking again, but Lucas had stumbled on them with their pants down during a particularly memorable New Year’s Eve party, where he had to eventually find an alibi for Yann’s girlfriend.

“Look, it’s not the same,” Emma rolled her eyes. “He wasn’t happy with Marion and we just had comfort sex.”

“That stretched out for weeks.”

“Do you know the very concept of fuck buddies?”

“I’m not sure that fuck buddies usually attend their booty-call’s engagement party,” Lucas observed, fishing his phone in his pocket.

“You  _know_ we stopped this months ago. It’s really no big deal and Nola’s okay with it.”

Lucas cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed, before nonchalantly unlocking his phone. “Does she know about the fuck buddies part?”

Emma opened her mouth, then seemed to think about her answer before shrugging one more time. “If Yann came clean about it then yeah, I bet she does,” she eventually said.

Lucas’ eyes snapped up and he stared at Emma, eyes bulging. “Oh, man, this is gonna be a mess,” he huffed, shaking his head. “You  _do know_ Basile’s already there, right? Basile and his big fat mouth? Basile no-filter Savary?”

“So is Eliott,” Emma bit back.

It was his turn to open and close his mouth, without being able to get a word out. “What the fuck does it have to do with Yann getting married?”, he asked haughtily.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly, “I’m just saying that while we’re talking about weird as shit relationships you need to take full responsibility of your own mess.”

He scoffed, but his eyes were glaring holes. “It’s gonna be easy then  _because_  there’s nothing weird about Eliott and me.”

“Right,” Emma drawled. He almost thought that was it. That she would gracefully drop the topic, a topic that was not even a topic  _in the first place_ , let alone her business. But instead, she pretended to give it a thought before she turned to him. “You know what? You’re right. After all ten years might not be enough for it to become weirdly comical. Because, y’know, the first five years it was fun to see you both dancing around each other, then the last five years it was just, well, plain depressing. Maybe in, like, five years, it’s gonna be fun again.”

“Just fuck off,” he gritted. “Eliott is my  _friend_ , and he was always there for me just like I’ve always been there for him. I don’t see how that can compare with the weird shit you and Yann keep pulling every three years or so,” he retorted dryly. And with that he grabbed his earbuds, put them on, and ostensibly turned his head the other way.

*

Okay, here was the thing.

When Lucas was young, he had started believing in alternate universes. Parallel worlds never really colliding, but with another Lucas in every single one of them, experiencing different lives and various fates. There was something comforting to it, to simply think about all the roads he hadn’t taken, the choices he hadn’t made, that other Lucases got to experience for him.

It had been comforting, really. To a certain point, at least.

He hadn’t exactly  _seen_  the biggest downside of it all until he was 16, and until he met Eliott. The guy had barged into his life during his second year of high school, after Christmas Break. Lucas could still remember the way the walls had seemed to collapse when he had entered the common room meeting — the way his eyes had travelled up all the way to him as if he was a magnet, and the way his breath had caught in his throat, lungs crumpling in his chest. Eliott was beautiful, with his crinkly eyes and his disarming smile, but he was also insanely  _hot_. Hotter than anyone Lucas had ever met. Prettier than anyone he had ever seen. And, well. That’s exactly  _where_  the problem had been since the beginning, since the first time they had met, since the moment they had hit it off at that vending machine, right after the common room meeting.

Lucas Lallemant wasn’t a match for Eliott Demaury and would never be.

It had been mostly fine until the night Eliott had told him bluntly, on the way back from a short-lived party on the school grounds, that he wasn’t necessarily looking for a girl to date. A straight guy was just a straight guy until he wasn’t anymore. But still, for better or for worse Eliott was still dating his long-time girlfriend, Lucille — it wasn’t like he was on the market.

It had become much more complicated when, a month or two after starting uni, Eliott had eventually dumped Lucille for Julien. An asshole, if you asked Lucas. Ridiculously good-looking for a philosophy major, and overly confident at that. He was tall and slightly lanky, about the same frame as Eliott — in short, the perfect size not to make hands holding or kissing awkward. Lucas had been on the shortlist of people who had gotten to meet him first (a privilege he’d have been fine not having), and when everyone had bombarded him with questions about Julien, all he had found to answer was ‘they look good together’. It wasn’t a lie; they really  _did_ look good together. And frankly, it was the only thing Lucas had allowed himself to say about it, because he just couldn’t bring himself to lie.

What was the problem with the parallel universes, you’d ask?

Well, it was the very night Eliott had come out to him that Lucas faced the bitter truth. He was lying in his bed, wide awake, eyes fixated on the ceiling when it hit him like a truck: somewhere, in another universe, Lucas n°99942 was hot enough to be considered a match for Eliott Demaury. You’d think it’d be more complicated to go on from there, to keep being friends with Eliott, to keep seeing him dating other people, but it wasn’t really  _that_ complicated. There was just nothing Lucas n°1 could do about it and water had flowed under that bridge. He had found cute guys for himself, not as hot as Eliott, and sometimes not nearly as caring as him, but that was just how it was.

For the most part, Lucas had made peace with it. Well, key words being ‘for the most part’. There was just no point in pretending that he wasn’t feeling his heartbeat rise up suddenly whenever Eliott’s face would brighten up at the sight of him during a party, or the way he’d always make sure that Lucas had a spot next to him whenever everyone would gather at a random bar. There was also no point in denying that a pair of stormy grey eyes sometimes popped up in his brain at… well,  _odd_   _times_. Nevertheless he’d blamed it on Eliott, and Eliott’s personality altogether.  _Everyone_ had feelings for him to a certain degree, even the straightest of their friends. Even Basile, Arthur and Yann had already put Eliott at the top of their list if they ever were to switch sides. Sure, for the past few years Lucas and Eliott had gotten even closer, but it wasn’t anywhere like Emma made it sound. It wasn’t odd and it wasn’t toxic. Maybe he hadn’t been fond of all of Eliott’s relationships. Maybe he hadn’t been thrilled to see Eliott get himself into a polyamory thing with a guy and a girl, particularly because he was afraid Eliott would end up hurting.  _Maybe_ he had told Anaëlle, Eliott’s most recent ex to this day, to fuck off once. He wasn’t proud of himself but he had always made amends afterwards and Eliott had always told him it wasn’t the end of the world.

They were glad to have each other, and it didn’t make it any more awkward between them that it did with Yann, plain and simple. It was nearly 11 when they made it to the hotel and he just couldn’t wait to let the pressure out and see everyone, he thought as he pushed open the door to the hotel’s lobby.

“Hey, don’t we know these two?” Emma asked, smirking as she gestured from her chin.

Yann and Eliott were chatting by the counter of the concierge. Eliott flashed them a smile, interrupting whatever he was saying, and Yann spun around to grin brightly at them. Hugs were in order and Lucas was soon wrapped in the arms of his longtime best friend. “Bro, congrats for Nola and you,” Lucas said, hugging him back. “You’ll make her super happy.”

No matter what he thought about the whole ordeal — he had figured it was the best to say. Right?

“Thanks Lulu,” Yann replied, still grinning broadly, then he went on to hug Emma. “Fuck I’m so glad to have you guys here. It’s gonna be awesome, everyone’s waiting for you!”

Eliott crossed his arms over his chest, and the loose tank-top he was wearing did a lot in favor of his biceps. “Don’t I get a hug or what?”

“Fuck you’re so needy, we’ve seen each other three days ago,” Lucas snorted, but he still went for a hug nonetheless.

Eliott chuckled, pulling him close. “It’s just nice to have you around.” He ruffled his hair a little as Emma and Yann were talking close by.

Lucas smiled and parted from him with the feeling of not having had nearly enough. “You too,” he smiled, looking up. 

Eliott slid an arm behind his neck, just like he casually did so often, making them both turn around toward Yann and Emma.

Lucas voluntarily ignored the pointed look she gave him as the four of them made their way to the elevator.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a bit longer than anticipated, i hope you'll like it 👀  
> don't forget to leave feedbacks they are always appreciated 🤗💖

“LALLEMANT’S HERE.”

Lucas should have known that having Arthur and Basile at the same time around a pool wasn’t a good idea, yet it wasn’t until he heard his two friends _wail_ as soon as he set a foot on the deck installed on the rooftop that he realized it was _a completely fucked up idea_. He barely had any second to blink before two pairs of arms grabbed him like vices; next thing he knew he was sputtering water after getting back to the surface.

At least he had the bright idea to change into swim trunks before coming there.

Bless him.

“You,” he scowled, hair dripping all over his face as his two friends were laughing their asses off, “I swear to God you both are _dead_.”

“Oh, c’mon, don’t say you didn’t expect it,” Arthur snorted, hands falling to his hips.

Lucas lifted himself up onto the edge of the pool in a splash of water, warily accepting the hand Basile landed him. “Astonishingly enough I thought that we were between civilized people. My mistake,” he groaned as he grumpily fistbumped them hello, before going to see the girls.

Only Nola and Manon were there, but he wasn’t surprised since Emma had already been told by the girls herself that Daphné, Alexia and Imane were held back in some shopping session but had promised to run back to the hotel as soon as possible. Yann’s girlfriend-turned-fiancée had been a part of the group for almost two years now, and since she didn’t have a weird obsession with how hot Eliott and Lucas getting it on together would be — Arthur’s ex had one of those and Lucas had wanted to strangle her more times he could count — she had been welcomed to stay. She and Yann had met up through Imane, both working as interns in the same hospital, so it had been easy from there, Lucas could only guess.

“Consider yourself lucky,” Manon pointed out from her spot on one of the deckchairs, closing the book she was reading as she pushed up her sunglasses, “you’ll never have to worry about keeping a wedding dress clean for a whole day with these two around.”

Next to her, Nola paled. “Oh please _no_.”

“Already talking about wedding dresses but I don’t see any ring yet,” Arthur snickered.

Nola grinned. “My fiancé couldn’t wait to propose, I guess? We’re gonna go shopping when we get back home.”

Lucas turned to Yann with a shocked expression. “Who does that?”, he scoffed.

They were at the beginning of their relationship. Lucas didn’t know much himself about functioning relationships but he could only guess that technically those kinds of inadvertent dick moves happened later down the road, usually.

Yann looked a bit sheepish. “I wanted her to pick something she likes,” he mumbled. “She’s gonna wear it after all.”

“Didn’t you pick your wedding suit for your dad’s second marriage, like, two days prior or something?” Basile quipped.

“I didn’t _want to go_ ,” he grumbled. “That’s different.”

“I don’t think any of us particularly wanted you to livestream us the whole thing but I guess we all take one for the team, uh?” Eliott casually chimed in, joining him on the edge of the pool and letting his long legs dangle in the water.

Since Lucas was mature, and a very functioning adult at that, he stuck his tongue out as a response.

*

“It’s too bad we’re only here for the weekend,” Eliott complained with a sigh as he flopped down onto Emma’s bed. “Remember those three weeks after your BAC?”

Lucas snorted as he kept rummaging through his travel bag, squatting at the foot of his bed. He hadn’t wanted to take everything out but now he was starting to rethink his decision as he exhumed a wrinkled denim button down. Daphné, Basile, Eliott, Yann, Nola, Imane and him had gone out for lunch in a restaurant nearby, while the rest was dispersed in the city to do some shopping, then everyone had flocked back to the hotel and they had spent the better part of the afternoon by the pool occasionally trying to drown each other when they were mostly alone, on the seventh floor. It was the coolest thing Lucas had ever seen. It wasn’t so much that he had never seen something like that before, but he just had a thing for climbing and rooftop activities — back in Paris he had specifically chosen his new flat according to whether or not he had access to the one of his building. And well, also if he could afford it or not, but that was another story.

“We were young and wild and free,” Lucas commented dramatically.

He eventually set the shirt down, before grabbing his travel bag and emptying all of its content on his bed. It wasn’t like Eliott of all people would bat an eye at his calvin kleins. He reached for a pair of black pants finally standing out on the white comforter now that they weren’t lost in the deep end of the bag.

“I’d pick the black shirt,” Eliott said casually.

Lucas quirked a brow at him. “You just say that because it’s the one _you_ bought me.”

Eliott grinned, making his eyes crinkle. “Well, yeah. Precisely,” he said, shrugging a little.

“I’m not going to dress all black, that’s right up your alley,” Lucas quipped.

“I’m trying to bring a little bit more colors, if you must know,” Eliott retorted, tugging at the hem of his light grey tank top as if it was a proof that it was a _color_. “Besides, the jeans you had this morning were fine, and they would look even finer with the black shirt. Who bought them for you?”

Lucas pondered the question and considered telling him to fuck off, but instead he just sighed. “Manon,” he grumbled, and Eliott started laughing like an asshole. Which was kind of sweet, but vaguely irritating. Lucas glared at him. “ _Someday_ I’ll claim back my closet, and you and Manon will finally stop dressing me up like I’m some sort of baby doll.”

“Wrong choice of words on every level.” The bastard smirked cheekily, regardless of the unimpressed look Lucas sent him. “Plus, we dress you up because you’d still be wearing sweatpants to your dates if it weren’t for us meddling in.”

“You’re admitting you’re meddling in, we’re getting at it,” Lucas bit back haughtily.

“Just admit I care about you, you little shit,” Eliott snorted.

Lucas cocked an eyebrow. “What did we say about size jokes?”

“It was a term of endearment,” Eliott protested, sitting up on Emma’s bed and leaning back his weight onto his hands.

It cruelly emphasized the veins on his arms and the sun was shimmering onto his skin and the tattoos he had on the underside of his arm. _Not afraid? Not afraid._ It had been a recurring joke between them when they were younger (a lifetime ago) and someday Eliott had snapped and just gotten it inked for good. Lucas had almost chocked himself when he had seen it on Instagram.

“And I’m feeling so _endeared_ right now.”

Eliott flipped him off and Lucas chuckled. “Who are you rooming with anyway?”

“Arthur,” Eliott said casually. “Why, needed me to brush your hair?”

“Not really, but who’s gonna read me stories about hedgehogs and raccoons?” Lucas deadpanned.

“Hilarious,” Eliott deadpanned with the same voice.

Lucas laughed and went to push open the bathroom door, then stopped halfway and turned back. “Hey, I was meaning to ask. You still have the address of the tattoo parlor where you got those?”, he asked, gesturing at Eliott’s tattoos with his chin.

Eliott glanced down at his arms, a little bit lost, then he grinned. “No way, you’re gonna get one? After all this time?”

Lucas huffed and shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe? I’ve been thinking, you know. So you still have it or not?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Eliott smiled with a nod. “I’ll send it to you. They’ve got an Instagram page and all, no bad surprise.”

“Nice,” he nodded, almost to himself.

“What are you thinking about getting?” Eliott asked, curious. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

Lucas pondered the question. “It’s not really- I don’t know, I was thinking about maybe getting something about my mom, but it sounds- I don’t know it seems kinda stupid.”

He scrunched his nose, mostly to himself. Now Eliott was gonna imagine him with a real-size portrait of his dead mom tattooed on his chest or something equally weird. All he had thought about so far was something small and rather casual, like a date or something no bigger than that. He had debated for months about it, thinking that it was maybe a bit hypocritical — after all he hadn’t really been the best son towards the end and he still had to live with a sense of relief that had washed over him after she had passed, before the actual pain could settle in — but now he considered that it didn’t mean he couldn’t honor his mom anyway simply because she wasn’t there anymore.

“It’s not stupid if it means something to you,” Eliott said.

Lucas huffed a laugh, which was his number 1 reaction whenever he had shared too much and just wanted it to stop. “Yeah, well, I’m just thinking, you know? Plenty of time for me to chicken out.”

“Not afraid. Remember?”

“Thank you Octavia Blake. I’ll remember that,” he snorted, pushing past the bathroom door.

*

Everything was fine, Lucas thought.

Absolutely, a hundred percent fine. He was fine. Yann was fine. Nola, Imane, Manon, Arthur, Basile, Daphné, Emma, Alexia were all fine. Eliott was fine. And the waiter who had been painstakingly hitting on him for the better part of the past hour was _absolutely_ fine too.

They had all reunited at a bar down the street to get predrinks before hitting the clubs to celebrate, and Lucas was _happy_ about it, he really was. Having all his friends gathered in one place and a free night to remember the good old times, what more could he ask, right? The third time Guillermo or Guz or whatever that stupid nametag read came around and eye-fucked Eliott without even the slightest hint of embarrassment, he genuinely thought he would burst though. The problem wasn’t that anyone was hitting on _Eliott_ — water under the bridge and all — but it was rather that everyone seemed to find it the funniest thing on the goddamn planet.

Daphné certainly didn’t need another umbrella in her stupid cocktail.

Arthur didn’t _need_ a refill.

And no one cared about the goddamn _tapas_ and their fucking recipes.

As soon as the stupid waiter had gone back to the kitchen with a bright smile and a lingering look on Eliott, Emma leaned over the table. “He wants to give you the d so _bad_ ,” she grinned devilishly.

Eliott snorted and shook his head, leaning back against the backrest of his chair. “Maybe hookups at the back of a restaurant are your thing but they aren’t mine.”

Yann laughed, making his glass spin a little between his fingers. “Mr. Demaury’s a romantic, we been knew after all.”

“A romantic who’s single and isn’t getting any,” Emma commented, nose in her glass.

“That’s comforting, Emma, _thank_ _you_.”

The table started laughing, but apparently Emma’s remark had sparked some interest in Daphné’s mind. Lucas knew something stupid would come out of it even before she opened her mouth — it wasn’t that she was stupid, it was just that this _whole conversation was_.

“She’s got a point,” she said thoughtfully. “You’re like one of the hottest guys I know, don’t tell me you’re still hung up on Anaëlle.”

“Anaëlle's _hot_ ,” Alexia added, widening her eyes comically. “You guys were goals.”

Lucas almost snorted, but managed to hide it behind a coughing fit. Everyone knew that Eliott was bipolar, but he didn’t like to bring it up or to speak about it to all of them; in the end Lucas was generally the only one, sometimes along with Alexia or Basile whenever he needed advises, to know the extent of his low lows. The fact that at least one of Anaëlle and Eliott’s many breakups had been caused by a tantrum she had thrown because he wasn’t answering her texts fast enough, when he had already made a supreme effort to write her, _with words_ , that he wasn’t feeling alright at the moment, was one of the things that only Lucas knew, and sometimes he wished he could share this information and the resentment towards her without betraying Eliott’s trust.

It was a tough balance to maintain, but he was managing it most of the time.

“Yeah, well. Anaëlle's busy these days,” Eliott shrugged. “It just wasn’t working with her in Berlin and me in Paris anyway. We’re both better apart.”

“Maybe we should try to set you up instead of trying to set up Lulu,” Basile said. “That’d make for a nice change.”

“I’ve never asked anybody to set me up,” Lucas scoffed.

“My bestman isn’t going to attend my wedding as a single man,” Yann retorted. “If by then you don’t have anybody to rock your nights, I’ll have to provide.”

“You wish you could, Cazas.”

On the other side of the table, Eliott grinned at him with a knowing look. “Spikey much, uh?”

Lucas rolled his eyes and downed his drink when he saw the waiter come back to their table with something they hadn’t even ordered, everyone holding back their breath with conspirator looks.

*

The first club they went to had a fifteen meters queue spilling outside the entrance and the slowest bouncer of the century. It took him an infinite amount of time to decide whether or not the group of five boys at the top of the line should be let in, before eventually deciding to ask them for their IDs. They all pretended to fumble for a while — or maybe they truly were this intoxicated already, hence why reaching for one of the four pockets of their jeans was so hard in the first place. In the meantime, Lucas was repressing the urge of constantly rolling his eyes by chatting away with Alexia and Eliott, until both got hooked by two girls (Dutch, apparently) from the group behind them. It wasn’t like he could really blame them. Eliott was _Eliott_ , and Alexia radiated the cool vibe every single breath she took. It was rather the feeling of being left out that he resented always a little bit more than he was supposed to, and not _just_ because people were hitting on Eliott.

Why should he care, after all?

If Eliott had game, he was happy for him.

Okay, maybe he was a bit upset. For the first time in forever they both happened to be single at the same time, and thus had no one clinging onto them for attention. This time, _Lucas_ was clingy. Problem was, Eliott was one of those people who could fall in love with a doorknob, and when it was paired with good looks and good personality, celibacy wasn’t bound to be Eliott’s strong suit, and up until now Lucas’ theory had been pretty much verified. With a huff to himself he lost interest in trying to keep up with the conversation with the Dutch girls. On his other side, Daphné and Basile were happily sucking faces, which kept grossing Lucas out even after all these years, so he sidestepped them to reach Nola, Imane and Manon and finally find civilized people to talk to.

When they got inside, the club was packed, the walls thrumming to the beat of the music, the air stuffed and the bartenders busy for a while. Arthur, Manon and him lost a few more minutes of their time, trying to get their attention for drinks, while everyone was flocking into a booth somewhere on the side of the dancefloor. Apparently it was vodka night, a weird mix that made the drinks a blue as icy as the neon lights spread everywhere around the club. Two of those helped him relax and enjoy the night, and from his spot in the nearly desert booth his friends had managed to get a grip on, he could see them dancing the night away. Yann and Nola were giggling stupidly while doing those sickeningly couple dance moves, Alexia was busy making out with one of the Dutch girls from before, and Eliott was laughing with some girl in a corner, her extra-long, extra-straight hair cascading to her hips Ariana Grande style.

He blamed it on Emma’s insistence during their flight, on the drinks he already had, on the colors of the neon lights, but suddenly he was sixteen again, and he was kissing Chloé until he jaws hurt, while his eyes were desperately glued to Eliott’s as if he needed those stormy grey pools to breathe. What was that party called again?

Right. Kiffance.

 _What a joke_.

*

He had only scarce memories of the second club, probably because it was not all that different from the first one. The third one, however, was in one of those underground locations that tried so hard to look grunge and hipstery — not like he minded. He was on whatever beverage Basile and Arthur had deemed fit for the occasion, and it tasted a bit weird and was strangely colorless, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as what he feared at fist. The floor swayed a little when he got up, but it was a fun feeling that made him giggle for almost nothing. He felt warm and fuzzy and his accent in English had gotten so thick that he wasn’t sure anyone could get a single word anymore, but it didn’t seem to put off the guy who had pressed him up against the wall a while ago, and who was slowly climbing his way in the top 5 of the best kissers Lucas had come across in a long time. He was kinda hot too, the kind Lucas wouldn’t mind letting in his pants. In their booth, the boys were apparently cheering on him for some reason, and Yann raised his glass to him, making Lucas huffing a little breathy laugh between wet kisses.

When the guy reached for him to drag him in a more secluded corner, he followed suit.

For some reason though, the memory of a pretty brunette with bangs and a chirpy voice stuck at the back of his head while they walked around the dancefloor.

*

What time was it? He had no idea. All he knew was that, while he was making his way back towards the booth after maybe or maybe not giving a blowjob, ‘fuck yes’ was the answer he had given when Arthur had come across him with the promise of some fresh air and some weed. _Like the good old times._ The air hit him in the face as they got outside through the back door, a welcomed kick he didn’t know he needed that made his head spin a little. They settled against some sort of railing, taking a hit every now and then.

Emma showed up at some point, and Lucas vaguely heard something along the lines of the girls minus Daphné going back to the hotel, and Arthur probably needing to find a place to crash because she was sure she had seen Eliott leave with someone.

Lucas handed the joint to her then went back inside. There was probably some room left in his system for another drink.

*

There was some room left for one, but probably not for three. The fact that the ground now swayed dangerously should have disqualified him from dancing, but the beat was just so alluring and the movement of the other people helped him steady himself and follow — to a certain degree. People and faces and neon lights kept printing themselves a second too long in his brain each time he blinked.

*

He tripped over his own feet in the stairs leading up to the street, nearly falling face first in a fit of giggles. The others were lost to the crowd, for those who still remained at least, and his mind kept skipping what looked like a frame every now and then.

*

 _Wow, what the fuck, you okay_? The voice was familiar. French? Maybe. He didn’t know, and suddenly the brick wall next to him grew alarmingly close.

*

Fuck he was gonna regret this. A giggle burst out of him.

*

Lucas cracked his eyes open with the feeling of rising up from the dead. His brain was fuzzy and his throat dry as a desert, and if there weren’t many pleasant occasions on which those two things gathered at the same time, this one was definitely  _not_  one of those. He found himself staring at the void, eyelids heavy, for at least good minute. The blinds hadn’t been shut at all, and apparently all the sunlight in the world had decided to flood in this particular room in order to make his eyeballs melt. With a wince at the pounding headache, he closed his eyes and tried to swallow down some saliva. Which, in fact, wasn’t that good of an idea. Lucas winced some more in disgust at the bad taste, curling a little bit on himself. The question was now how much courage he had left to get up, for a total of three minutes, just enough to grab a glass of water he’d probably apply first thing on his forehead, then go to the bathroom to relieve his bladder from all the liquid he had the night before. Good plan. Good. Plan. That was a good plan, Lucas thought sluggishly. The major flaw was that he didn’t know if his stomach would make it.

Said stomach started gurgling and Lucas felt a chill run up his spine.

Okay. The bladder would wait. It  _would_. He squeezed his eyes shut, digging his face deeper in his pillow. Fuck. How many fucking drinks did he have? He hadn’t had a black-out since college, and now he was starting to remember why he had stopped pushing himself to the breaking point.

Because it fucking  _sucked_ afterwards.

A quiet huff echoing in the room and a movement on the other side of the bed made his eyes snap back open, the mattress dipping a little bit.

Oh no.

Oh no, no,  _no_.

He forced his last two surviving braincells to connect together, but his mind was blank. All he could hear was the birds chirping aggressively outside, a few cars passing down the street and someone walking outside the room, feet digging into the thick carpet. 

_Thomp, thomp, thomp._

He didn’t remember hooking up with anybody. Let alone bringing them back to the hotel afterwards. That being said he didn’t remember much at all in the first place. He tried to scan his memory for any available clue but the only that came to his mind was Yann happily cheering on him for some reason, a very colored cocktail he didn’t remember the name of and-

Oh. Yeah.

He had hooked up with someone. Some guy. In a club.

Now he recalled. He also recalled getting down on his knees and he humfed to himself.

Yeah. Great. He didn’t dare to move now. It wasn’t his firstone night stand, don’t get him wrong. He had had his share of those. But rarely ever with a hangover of this magnitude. Fuck he wasn’t in the right state to have the awkward morning after talk. No matter if the guy was all casual about it — they lived in two different countries and Lucas was literally there for two days, it wasn’t like something else would happen anyway. It still felt impossibly awkward regardless and the prospect of dealing with it didn’t help his already unsteady stomach. Particularly when he couldn’t get out. Because it was his room, right? Lucas squinted his eyes. It _must_ be. Who else’s would it be?

It didn’t make sense. He spared a glance around. The armchair in the corner. The table aligned against the wall. The commode with a small tv screen. He could make up the dark shape of a building towering outside, across from the street.

It wasn’t his hotel room, Lucas thought.

Unless they had built whatever that building was last night.

He knew the hoodie thrown carelessly on the armchair though. And the sneakers near the foot of the bed. Heartbeat rising as realization downed on him, Lucas mustered enough courage to sit up, and after taking a deep breath, he turned his head to the other side of the bed, hands clutching at the sheets pooling low around his waist, where Eliott was still dead to the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everybody gets into the angsty train 📢


	4. Chapter 4

The first time Lucas dreamt of having Eliott in his bed (or at least in a sexual way) was the same night his friend had come out to him as, well, _not_ straight. It wasn’t the first time he was dreaming of Eliott — in the short span of time, he had known him, back when he was sixteen, Lucas had already dreamt of his smile, of his laugh, of his lips and the taste they’d have against his own. He had dreamt of Eliott asking him out. Of kissing him. Of being hugged by him. Of that time they had hung out at his place and he had played the piano for him, and in his dreams Eliott’s phone never rang. Until that night Lucas had managed to keep it clean, chaste, and thinking back it wasn’t that small of a performance, considering his brain was _flooded_ with hormones. But after that, after Eliott’s confession, it wasn’t just sweet kisses and shy whispers anymore, it was Eliott’s skin burning under his fingertips. It was his hand fisting in his hair as the weight of Eliott’s body pressed him down into the mattress. It was warm breath against his neck and unspeakable pleasures, and in the morning a string of sticky underwear, skin cool from the dried sweat and a terrible feeling stinging somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

He remembered feeling awful about it. It was wrong for Eliott, who hadn’t asked to be the number one player of his nightly fantasies. In the end he had tried to repress it as best as he could, and even though his brain was still having a blast every now and then for a couple more months after that, he had been able to look Eliott in the eye again without blushing, and to get a boner over _other_ guys than him.

He had always considered it a victory.

But in none of his dreams, he had ever found himself in a situation like this. Plenty of American movies featured the trope ‘I wake up stark naked in my best friend’s bed whoospie’, and up to this day he hadn’t given two shits about it, which was absolutely, completely _fine_ with him.

_This isn’t fucking real._

Lucas’ breath caught in his throat as he took in his sleeping best friend. The sheets resting at the small of Eliott’s back, his floppy hair falling over his forehead, his face buried in the pillow he was hugging. The hard line of his spine and the dips on his back, the skin thin over his ribs, the curve of his bicep. On the other side of the room, Arthur’s bed was empty, so painfully, _ironically_ empty, that he nearly wanted to let out a dry laugh, but he wasn’t sure he could produce a sound at the moment. He had only scarce memories of hooking up with _some guy_ in a club and Eliott was definitely _not_ that guy. He didn’t want to have to guess it, to guess what had happened for him, for them to end up like this. He didn’t want to think about it _at_ _all_. _It’s a nightmare_. He must have passed out on the pavement in the street and he’d wake up with his head split in two for sure. Or maybe he had just blacked out so bad he’d come back to in the hospital only to be told his stomach had been pumped. _Anything_ , as long as it didn’t involve Eliott and him having sex while not even being aware of it.

It was wrong on so many levels that starting to count only made his head spin and his breathing quicken, and the walls get closer, and his chest constricting painfully-

 _I gotta get out_.

 _Right the fuck now_.

Heartbeat fast and blood pounding to his ears, he threw a panicked look around in search of his clothes — he found them, scattered on the floor among Eliott’s. Another wave of panic washed over him, and it was only with a supreme effort that he managed to swallow down whatever was threatening to climb its way up his throat. Now really was a fucked up timing to puke, which, considering the whole situation, spoke volumes already. Disentangling himself from the sheets, he rolled out of bed with the smallest amount of noises and movement, and slid into his underwear. The rest-   _Fuck the rest_ , he thought, and he crouched down to haphazardly pick up his shirt, his pants, his shoes, all the while praying that the phone he hadn’t set on mute would not fucking ring any second now as he reached the door as fast as his body could handle it at the moment.

He didn’t release the breath he’d been holding until the door was carefully shut behind him, and only then Lucas slumped against the wall, still holding his clothes tight. It took him an extra minute and a truck noisily making its way down the street to realize he was standing in his underwear in the corridor of a hotel. With slightly trembling movements, he set his clothes down and started putting on his pants, desperately swallowing the lump in his throat to no avail.  

He had fucked up.

He had fucked up really bad.

He couldn’t believe some shit like this would ever happen to him, and certainly not with Eliott. What the fuck had happened, anyway? How did they end up in a situation like this? What was the-

“Lucas? You okay?”

His head snapped to the side, where the voice had come from, and his heart jerked in his chest. His eyes bulged for a second, and before he could even say a word, Manon took a step closer. She seemed genuinely worried, a deep crease between her brows. What the fuck was she doing here? Wasn’t it supposed to be early? Too early to meet anyone? Her eyes travelled between him and the door of the room a couple of times.

“I- I don’t-” He shook his head and crouched down to pick up the rest of his clothes. “I don’t want- I don’t want to talk about it. Okay? Please,” he huffed, voice rough, as he turned his back on her to get to the staircase at the end of the hall.

*

The memory of Eliott sleeping was printed in his brain and refused to disappear, even as he tried desperately to clear his hazy mind under the ice cold stream pouring out of the shower head. Eliott had been one of the best things that had ever happened to him. He had been a constant. He had always been there for him and the other way around. It was never weird. It was never boring. Sometimes he would get upset after Yann. He had gotten annoyed fairly often at Basile’s behavior in the past. He did fight with Arthur at least once, and probably more.

But never with Eliott.

He tilted his head back, brushing his dripping hair away from his face, but the motion had him reaching blindly for the wall, trying to steady himself. In the room next door, _his_ room this time, Emma was still snoring and the last thing he wanted was to wake her up — not so much because he wanted to spare her the trouble, but mostly because he wanted to get to his bed and pretend nothing had happened as long as he would be able to do that. Because there would be no turning back, right? He wasn’t the kind of people to laugh it off when something like that happened. He didn’t just hook up with friends and things were good as new the following morning. He didn’t do it with _regular_ friends. How could he do it with _Eliott_ of _all people_?

The shower wasn’t nearly enough to calm him down but it was enough for his stomach to finally give up on him. After throwing up for five minutes until he had nothing but his organs left to puke, he dragged himself to the room, and putting fresh underwear on was as far as his energy could take him, before he dropped himself flat on the bed. Emma was still blissfully out and he couldn’t have been more envious if she had found a suitcase with millions of euros inside. Body heavy and heart heavier, he crawled in his bed and curled on himself, hoping he would pass out soon enough for everything to stop spinning — and not just metaphorically.

*

The good news was that he did pass out. The bad news was that the world was still spinning a little as Emma shook him awake with the face of someone who had very much _not_ intended to wake up.

“Your stupid phone,” she grumbled, and only then Lucas started to find back contact with reality.

And reality sucked, he figured as he randomly picked a tee-shirt and a pair of shorts from his travel bag to get dressed and join his best friend for brunch in the restaurant on the other side of the street. The only treat he had allowed himself was to keep his sunglasses inside, and his best friend didn’t miss an opportunity to call him out about it.

“Well, you look like trash,” he chuckled, pulling him close by the shoulder. “Should have stopped when I told you to, uh?”

“Too bad I was already too far gone,” Lucas groaned, batting his hand away as they sat down at a table. “Where’s your other half?”

“She’s gone out for breakfast with Imane and Manon a while ago. It’s nearly noon, you know,” Yann snorted, shaking his head when Lucas pulled a face.

“I don’t really know, the only reason I got out of my bed is because Emma snores.”

It made Yann laugh. “Yeah, I know. I remember that. I’m surprised she even made it back to her bed though, she’s got a tendency to end up in, well, other people’s bed,” he said casually without looking up from the menu.

Lucas’ eyes snapped up to his face, and he was glad he had sunglasses at all because he must have looked like a madman, with his eyes bulging out of their sockets. His heartbeat shot up and it was a miracle Yann wasn’t looking at him because he must have jumped onto his seat. Fuck. _He_ _knows_ , Lucas thought, alarmed. How did he even know? Had he been all over Eliott in public? There was no way Yann wouldn’t be grilling him right the fuck now if it was the case.

“Uh. Yeah,” he mumbled. “I guess she does.”

Yann kept staring at the menu for an agonizing minute, and Lucas relaxed a little bit as the seconds stretched out. He didn’t know. It was good. It was fine for now. A waitress came to them and Yann ordered a half-dozen of different things while Lucas was trying to put a lock onto his stomach. He simply ordered a black coffee, then sluggishly slumped back against the backrest of his chair. His best friend looked like he hadn’t had that much to drink the night before, or at least not enough to be hungover.

Lucas cleared his throat a little. “So uh, anything interesting last night?” When Yann looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, he shrugged. “I got, uh, kind of… blank parts. I vaguely remember, uh, some guy, but that’s pretty much it.”

Yann hummed immediately. “Don’t worry, you didn’t do much. Well, not that I know of at least. You had all your clothes on last I spotted you, which isn’t always the case,” he grinned broadly, and Lucas repressed the need to kick him in the shin — mostly because the table stand seemed weirdly twisted.

Simply because _once_ he had gotten his shirt off. _Months ago_. The waitress came back with their orders and Lucas blearily listened to Yann commenting about whatever the hell he wanted them to do before flying back to Paris tomorrow morning, nose in his coffee. He nodded a couple of times, vaguely hummed a response or two, and bumped his knee in the table when his phone suddenly lit up with a text.

From Eliott.

He stared blankly at the notification, and it took him an extra second to realize that Yann had talked to him. “What?”, he croaked out.

“I was asking if you were waiting for something important,” Yann repeated slowly. “You kinda look on the edge, bro.”

Lucas reached out for his cup and forced himself to take a sip of coffee. “I’m just, uh, a bit off. Hangover and all. It’s nothing.”

Yann nodded and went back to his monologue without bothering much — which Lucas was eternally grateful for. He let a few seconds pass, but his phone on display on the table seemed to call for his attention, a magnet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from, no matter how much he wanted to. Almost on its own accord, his hand picked his phone up and unlocked it, heart thrumming. The only comforting thought, if it was any comfort at all, was that at best he could only puke a sip or two of coffee if his stomach decided, all of a sudden, to pull another number on him.

_hey there_

The two word text left Lucas a little stupid for a hot second. He deciphered for a moment while Yann was speaking about some sort of Cathedral he absolutely needed to see.

_hi_

_did you get back safe?_

Lucas bit the inside of his cheek before replying.

_yeah._

_just got up actually. emma snores._

_oh okay cool_

He was gonna get a heart attack. This conversation was going to leave marks on him. Every single time the little dots went off while Eliott was writing things and obviously erasing them, somewhere on the other side of the street, he could feel his life span being shortened by ten years. Maybe he didn’t want them to be friends anymore. Maybe he was just trying to get around the good way to word it. It seemed to last forever before the next text arrived, and he was pretty sure he had another stroke when it appeared on his screen.

_i think i hooked up with someone_

Lucas stared. And stared, and stared, and stared again. His thumbs started typing the answer before he had actually fully wrapped his head around what was happening.

_well, good for you_

_catch up later?_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for the delay 🤧 thank you for all the nice comments and supportive feedbacks, it means the world 😌💕🙏  
> you can always find me at @demaury on tumblr 💕

Actively avoiding Eliott wasn’t something Lucas was very good at, specifically because he hadn’t tried to do so in years. Even back in high school, his attempts invariably failed to the point where he had, at least on one occasion, literally slammed head first into him in the hallway.

Back then it wasn’t exactly _serious_. The only noticeable moment where he had tried was during the week following the worst double-date he had had to this day. Lucille was still in the picture at the time and Lucas had somewhat let himself be talked into spending an evening with Eliott, Eliott’s girlfriend, and the girl he was dating at the moment — Chloé. All things considered, he could have never predicted the outcome of that evening. He certainly hadn’t expected Eliott, sweet Eliott, funny Eliott, charming Eliott, _bouncy_ Eliott, to constantly snap at his girlfriend all through the night, until he could just _not_ take it anymore and was forced to fake an emergency situation to get the hell out of there — something about his back-then-roommate Mika forgetting his keys. It wasn’t like he held Eliott accountable for the shitty night per se, but it was just that he didn’t get what his friend was still doing with her considering he had told him once that their relationship wasn’t going anywhere anymore.

Other times had included avoiding Eliott as to not cross path with his philosophy-major-boyfriend, and occasionally Anaëlle, but those times had never included avoiding Eliott’s texts. That was a brand new feature, apparently. Five of them had been piling up onto each other through the afternoon, but he still hadn’t read any of them. “Later” in his books generally meant “as late as possible”, which is why he indulged into typical tourism activities by sneaking his way in the little group formed by Imane and Nola — what he hadn’t planned, however, was that Manon would be here as well. He had been too caught up in losing his sanity to remember about the awkward run-in with Manon earlier that morning, and it was only when he realized she seemed too invested in their trip to the Sagrada Familia to care about his business that he started breathing a little bit better.

What he anticipated a little too late was that playing tourist in a big city like Barcelona all the while riding a hangover in the midst of summer was probably _not_ be anyone’s go-to adventure while on vacation, for plenty good reasons that involved his headache and his general state of tiredness. He allowed himself a time-out far from the crowd on the forecourt of the basilica while the girls eagerly took a spot at the back of the line of visitors.

He was tempted to join them after a while — God knew he could use a little bit of fresh air at the moment — but his laziness highjacked that particular thought and he dropped it, staying put in the semi-shadowy spot he had managed to find outside. He hadn’t been to Church in years, and hadn’t even entered one since his mom’s funeral. Frankly? He had never been a true fan and years later he still very much wasn’t. It was gloomy. Impressive, even, in the kind of way that made his insides twist painfully and the hair rise up at the back of his neck.

“Who peed in your cheerios?”

His eyes darted up to meet Imane’s quirked brow, and he shrugged it off as he pocketed his phone. “Charming.”

“You sure look like you’re having a blast.”

 “I don’t like churches.”

She snorted, then perched herself next to him. “But you’re an architect. Don’t tell me that visiting the-” she paused to read the brochure, “’one-of-a-kind temple’ and the ‘fruit of the work of genius architect Antoni Gaudí’ doesn’t sound like the kind of nerdy things you like?”

Lucas gave her an unimpressed look. “Do colonoscopies excite you?”

Imane shot him a squinty look. “Oh, okay, nice. What’s with the long face? We’re in Barcelona till tomorrow morning, you could at least pretend you’re enjoying it and keep the long face for another day, what do you think?”

He rolled his eyes and wiped a drop of sweat running down his neck. “I’m having the worst hangover of my life, is all. And I got a stroke yesterday afternoon when we were chilling by the pool so I don’t think you’d want to be in my shoes.”

“I never wanted to be in your shoes in the first place, but yeah, you’re right, I definitely don’t.”

He huffed, then adjusted the glasses up his nose. “Got any vacation plans for the rest of the summer?”

“Family trip to Morocco next month,” she said with a sigh. “Sofiane’s mom and mine are calling every day to make sure we’re still in. Honestly I’m about to lose my _mind_. Never thought that my family and Sofiane’s hitting it off would be such a pain in the ass,” she grumbled.

Well, that was at least one thing he wouldn’t have to worry about, he refrained himself from adding. It was one those thoughts that dampened the atmosphere when in fact it was really no big deal. Sure, sometimes he felt bad about his family situation, about not being in speaking terms with his dad, about his mom being dead and all, but it wasn’t like he could do something about it.

“The perk of being single,” he shrugged instead.

“How many are there?”

Lucas pondered the question. Well, objectively, it wasn’t that bad. He didn’t have to share his attention, he didn’t have to try so hard to make someone else’s schedule fit with his own, and he wasn’t stuck with a bad lay for boyfriend — it did happen before.

“I do what I want. Counts as plenty,” he shrugged.

“Now you just sound like a three year old.”

“And you sound just like Yann,” he retorted. “Celibacy isn’t a disease. Have you seen how Manon is thriving ever since she’s single?”

“Yeah but that’s because she’s got a thing for pedantic, controlling and slightly neurotic douchebags,” Imane waved. “You just like to sabotage your relationships.”

He gaped at her, offended. “What do you mean, I _sabotage_ my relationships? I got cheated on twice, thrice if you count sending nudes to your ex while in a relationship!”

She sighed and shifted a little bit more towards him. “Are we doing this again? Frankly, Lucas, you don’t know what you want, and it’s starting to _show_. You got pissed at Kevin for dragging out making you meet his family and six months later you got pissed at _Maxime_ because you felt like ‘meeting the in-laws didn’t just feel right at the moment’…”

“We were barely a month into the relationship,” Lucas interrupted.

“… You vetoed every single apartments you visited with Benjamin until he dropped the idea of the two of you moving together…”

“He didn’t make millions, how did he even plan on going through every rent?”

“… and then you got mad at Will because it didn’t seem like he wanted to stick around…”

“He ended up _cheating_ ,” Lucas snapped. “You can’t put this on me.”

Imane took off her sunglasses long enough to spare him a scowl, then she sighed. “Whatever things they see in you is beyond my understanding.”

*

The rest of the afternoon rolled around quickly. Quietly, in a way. The girls excitedly commented their trip inside the Basilica while they were getting ice-creams and they celebrated with a round of selfies featuring Nola’s fake engagement ring, that Alexia had made out of the neon-pink straw from her watermelon smoothie. Later they did some shopping in a gift shop before getting back to the hotel just as Lucas’ headache had gotten unbearable all over again — he was also positive he had gotten a sunburn on the back of his neck, which was the cherry on top, really. His only thought as they rode the elevator up to his and Nola’s floor was to fall flat on his bed and take a well-deserved nap before dinner — so much that he almost missed the moment Nola called him in the deserted hallway, once the elevator had gone to the last floor with the rest of the girls.

He turned a curious face on her and she seemed embarrassed for a second, tucking a strand of her sandy-blond hair behind her ear a couple of times. “You’re not- uh, you’re not mad about Yann proposing, are you?”, she said, sounding rather hesitant.

He frowned. “What?”

She took a step or two closer, a small crease between her brows indicating that she was sincerely worried. “I mean, you’d tell me, right?”

It was kind of a shitty position, if he was being honest at least to himself. What was he supposed to say? That he wasn’t _mad_ about them being engaged while still thinking it was a shitty idea? “What makes you think so?”, he asked, hoping that his attempt at deflecting had been somewhat smooth.

It seemed to be, considering that Nola didn’t appear to notice. “I don’t know, you look a bit… grumpy, ever since you got here. And at first you gave your ticket plane to Alexia last minute, so it kinda looked like you wouldn’t come at all,” she confessed, then before he could say anything she rambled again: “‘Course, I’m not judging, I know what it’s like, to be completely overworked, because, you know, hospital life and stuff but-”

Lucas winced to himself. “Look, Nola, it really has nothing to do with you. Or with the wedding, or with Yann. Okay?” he smiled, perhaps a bit tightly. “He’s my best friend, of course I want him to be happy. I’m just a bit off and all that summer heat makes me sick.”

Nola pursed her lips a little and nodded. “Yeah. Okay, I’m just- I’m sorry.” She pulled a face. “I know I’m overthinking and all. It’s just that I’m always so busy, and I don’t have much time to hang out with all of you guys in the end. Meanwhile, Daphy’s always there and… well, even though I know Yann’s moved on from Emma, she’s just there all the time, just like Manon. So in the end the only one who _isn’t_ there, well, it’s me… And you’re his favorite person on Earth probably.” She sighed and rubbed her arm nervously. “It makes me feel self-conscious at times. It’s stupid, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, really. I’m just- uh, I’m just gonna lie down a bit before dinner.”

She smiled encouragingly. “You’re right. You look a little pale. I see you later.”

He nodded and she walked past him with a small wave to get to her hotel room.

Once he found himself alone, Lucas searched his pockets to find the key to his own, which made it all the more difficult to ignore the fact that he hadn’t even checked his phone for the last couple of hours, because it was still opened on the conversation with Eliott, and that as soon as he’d unlock it all the texts he had not read since his “ _Is it later already?”_ from this morning would be marked as such. And since avoidance really was his only coping mechanism at the moment, he was just stuck being a coward.

He really needed to lay down.

*

Lucas didn’t know what was in the air tonight, or if there was anything at all going on in the first place, but right now he regretted leaving his hotel room.

Things were awkward. And not _just_ regarding whatever situation he was in with Eliott. Thing was, he had expected that Eliott would say something about them not seeing each other all day. He had prepared himself for the puppy look™ and for the eventuality of being called out grumpily. What did he get? Nothing. When he started mumbling an half-hearted apology about napping and not seeing his texts, Eliott had shrugged.

“It’s fine. No big deal,” he had said as they walked inside the restaurant. Ever since, Lucas had been on the freaking edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was just _something_. The restaurant wasn’t the cause of anything weird happening, it was actually a rather nice place; they had two tables set on the terrace at the back, and they could make up the faint some of some jazzy music being played in a bar, a little further down the street.

The problem actually seemed to be _within_ the group, for some reason.

The conversation was never picking up more than a couple of minutes on either end of the table, everyone going back to a kinda awkward silence in-between where you could just hear the silverware clicking against the plates. He couldn’t remember the last time something like that had happened — there sure had some hella awkward moments when Manon and Charles had gotten back together, but it had happened a lifetime ago. Usually at least Basile was up to entertain some kind of conversation, no matter how stupid it was, yet even him was oddly quiet. He was sitting close to the opposite end of the table from where Lucas was, but even from there he could see Daphné deliberately _not_ talking to him, choosing to make conversation with Manon instead.

“What’s up with them?” Lucas enquired as he leaned towards Yann, who was sitting next to him.

He spared a glance and waved. “Don’t mind them. They’ve been in a crappy place for most of the afternoon. Apparently, Daphné’s real pissed about something.” He reached for his glass to take a sip of water. “For all I know in an hour it might be just good as new. Not worth the trouble to ask.”

Lucas let out a small snort. That was definitely an explanation, he thought as he went back to travel the food from one side to the other of his plate. It was a shame the heat and the remains of his hangover had put a lock onto his stomach because generally he liked everything that tasted a bit spicy and had shrimps in it, but right now he could barely bring himself to take a bite every now and then. A few seats away, Alexia was chatting with Eliott whenever he wasn’t entirely focused on whoever was texting him constantly since they had all sat down earlier. Lucas spared a casual glance in their direction when Eliott turned his phone for her to see some picture on display on an Instagram account.

Emma shamelessly peered above her shoulder. “No way, you scored the waiter from yesterday?,” she asked, eyes widening.

“Yeah”, Eliott shrugged casually as Alexia gave him back his phone. “I went back there to grab a drink this afternoon and we talked. He’s kinda cool.”

Arthur leaned forward, on the other end of the table, to get in Eliott’s visual field. “You do know that the concept of one night stands is based on the fact that there’s little to no conversations involved in the process, right?”  

“Yeah, what happened to you being too romantic to bone someone at the back of a restaurant?” Emma snickered.

“I never said it’d be a one night stand,” Eliott snorted, shaking his head. He picked up his phone just as it pinged with another notification.

“And what do you plan on doing then? Bringing him back with you to Paris?”

“Sending love letters?”

Eliott fired another… whatever, text or comment or god knows what, then set his phone screen down on the table and picked up his fork. “Shut up, we’re just talking.”

Lucas bit back any mean comment he could make at the moment and tried to focus on his plate. The conversation soon drifted back onto more pressing matters, starting with their return to Paris the following morning. His attention was slowly but steadily wandering away when, in the middle of a few chuckles around the table, he heard Eliott’s voice. “Nah, I was just thinking about staying a couple more days.”

“Really?”, Alexia said, thoughtful.

“Yeah,” Eliott nodded. “I’ve got nothing urgent waiting in Paris, which is, like, number 1 perk of being between two jobs, I guess?”

“That’s cool. I kinda wish I could stay too,” Daphné sighed, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. “Maybe we should organize a little-”

“Don’t tell me you’re staying for him,” Lucas scoffed, cutting her off mid-sentence as he pointed at the phone from his fork. It seemed to surprise everyone, starting with Lucas himself.

“Why not?” Eliott retorted, looking back at him. “He’s hot and he’s nice.”

Probably if you liked dummies who spent half their time posting stupid pictures of their abs on _Instagram_. He didn’t even need to see the picture from earlier to know he was just typically that guy. He had dated one of those, and all he could gather from that experience was that all the fucking clichés were true.

“He’s hitting on you!” Lucas exclaimed. “Of course he’s nice! As soon as he’ll have boned you he’s just gonna move onto the next one.”

Imane huffed. “Wow, really classy Lucas, even coming from you.”

Suddenly everyone was staring at him around the table, but he couldn’t be bothered to care. “Oh come on,” he insisted, “it’s practically part of the job description, right Em?”

Emma shrugged. “He’s not wrong. I mean, if he were into me, I’d-”

“Whatever. I don’t need you to tell me what to do, in case you haven’t noticed,” Eliott bit back.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, you just don't go around falling for people you met _twice_! How can you be so immature?”

“Isn’t that a Disney song or something?”, someone mumbled, somewhere around the table.

“Right,” Eliott huffed dryly, “because you're _such_ an example of maturity when it comes to dealing with your stupid emotions and your fucked-up relationships.”

“Oh yeah? And what about it?”

“Guys-,” Yann tried from the other end of the table, but he was cut off almost instantly.

“You know what,” Eliott snapped, “you're right, next time I should just get down on my knees three minutes after meeting them the first time, thanks for the tip.”

“It's got fucking nothing to do,” Lucas shouted. “This was a hook-up. You're just physically unable to do that and everyone fucking knows it, and guess who’s gonna have to deal with you being all depressed when you'll finally figure shit out, _like all the other times?_ ”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Daphné intervened, “don’t act like you get to have an opinion just because you slept with him once!”

Lucas’ eyes snapped to her at the exact same time he felt the ground was opening under his feet to finally, _finally_ swallow him up for good. There was a deafening silence as soon as the last word had fallen out of her mouth, and for a second nothing happened, as if everyone was frozen into place. He could feel Eliott’s eyes on him and it took him an extra-second to muster enough courage to meet them. Frankly? He wished he never did. There was a whole bunch of emotions packed in those stormy-grey eyes, but none of which Lucas had ever wanted to see directed at him — and worse, no trace of surprise whatsoever. Before anyone could say anything, Eliott grabbed his phone, and stood up in a loud scrap of his chair against the ground.

Alexia spun around on her chair. “El-,” she tried, but Eliott blurted a ‘don’t’ as he strode out of the terrace and disappeared inside the restaurant.

The silence around the table stretched out for a while, or at least Lucas thought so, until Yann’s voice made its way to his ears and finally redirected his focus back on something else that wasn’t Eliott’s empty chair. It was only then that Lucas registered that everyone was talking all at once, yelling even, except for Yann who looked incredibly astonished. Right now he didn’t even care.

He didn’t care how Daphné had found out.

He didn’t care that Eliott apparently knew already.

He didn’t care about Yann’s hurt expression.

He just needed to stop thinking for a hot minute.

Lucas shook his head, and stood up after throwing his napkin on the table, then he stormed out of the terrace by the same door Eliott had disappeared through.  


	6. Chapter 6

He walked.

He walked for quite a while, actually. First taking the direction opposite to their hotel, then wherever his feet would take him. Right, left. Right again. He hadn’t really thought it through — the whole “walking by myself in an unknown city I barely speak the language from” — but it wasn’t like he had thought much about anything since they got here. Right now he just needed to walk, and to be left alone, or else he was afraid he might blow up.  _Two fucking days_. He couldn’t believe it had only been two fucking days. He couldn’t believe how everything between him and Eliott had  _crashed_  in less than forty-eight goddamn hours, because of something he didn’t even remember doing.

At some point he just sat on a fountain until it got dark and most streets deserted.

His chest felt hollow but his body strangely heavy. The adrenaline was slowly wearing off, leaving him exhausted and profoundly upset. At himself. At Eliott. There was a part of him that hated him for pretending he didn’t know they had hooked up, but the nagging voice at the back of his head was stupidly aware he had done just the same. It didn’t answer the question about how Daphné had found out though. Had Eliott told her? He doubted it. If anyone had known, it might have been Alexia. Manon? Lucas had kept every single of her secrets ever since they were seventeen, he didn’t want to find out now that it was one-sided, he thought tiredly.

The way back to the hotel was a bit of a blur — he was on automatic pilot. A weird streetlamp, a flashy sign announcing a beauty salon, a vague memory of his whereabouts, and there it was. All he wanted, as he pushed past the door of the lobby, was for this day to be over. He didn’t think much either as he hit the right button in the elevator, merely slouching back against the metallic walls of the cabin as the door rolled closed. It was nearly 2, and he had certainly not expected for anyone to be still up after the evening they had, let alone that as soon as he’d pull the doorknob and step in, he’d be met with furious looks and exasperated faces. Emma, Imane, Basile, Manon and Arthur all scooted around, some sitting, some standing, and in the middle of the room, Yann, whose fuming face melted into something close to relief as soon as his eyes stumbled on him.

It took Lucas aback, to see the room so crowded, to the point his pace faltered.  

“What are you doing here?” he asked, voice rough, only letting go of the doorknob after a moment of silence.

Immediately, as soon as the door shut itself, Basile jumped from the foot of Emma’s bed, quick as a shotgun. “Lucas, Lucas, my man, I’m sorry, I’m  _so_ sorry,” he blurted out, gesturing from his hands nervously just like he was doing so often whenever he was tense. He always blamed it on being one quarter Italian, no matter how many times Arthur and Lucas had told him he couldn’t  _inherit_ this from anyone, biologically speaking. “It was shit of us, really-”

“He’s right,” Arthur chimed in, “it was totally not okay, we should have never-”

Basile nodded vigorously as he exchanged a look with Arthur. “Oh fuck, no,  _never_ -”

_Headache_. Lucas took a step back. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

There was a pause and Arthur and Basile seemed to deflate.

“You- you didn’t listen to the voice messages?” the latter asked, a little thrown-off.

“ _No_. Care to explain or you really want me to check my voicemail at almost  _2 in the fucking morning_?”

Another pause. Lucas wanted to strangle someone as everyone glanced at each other. Imane was the first one to break the silence, glaring at Emma who was sitting on the side of her bed. “Emma? Wanna say something maybe?”, she articulated, arms folded on her chest.

Emma swallowed thickly and met Lucas’ eyes before quickly looking down. “You didn’t- uh, you didn’t sleep with Eliott. Well- I don’t think you did. I don’t really know, maybe you guys-”

Yann huffed, exasperated. “Straight to the point!”

Lucas’ heart skipped a bit as his attention grew suddenly ten times more acute, making him feel like the entire room was spinning for a split-second.

Emma bit down on her bottom lip some more. “I’m the one who put you in his bed,” she said in a breath, words tumbling out of her mouth. They hung up in the air for a certain amount of time before they actually  _meant_ something to Lucas’ ears — and yet, even then, it just didn’t add up.

“You didn’t,” he gritted out after a minute.

Emma stood up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it’d derail like that!”

“Why the fuck would you do that? What is wrong with you?”, he shouted, then he turned to Arthur and Basile, pieces finally starting to stick together. “And you  _helped_   _her,_ you assholes?!”

“We were really wasted,” Arthur pleaded. “It wasn’t- I mean it’s  _not_  an excuse, we, uh, we know that-”

“We  _very_   _much_  do-,” Basile nodded.

Lucas stared at them in disbelief, unable to find the right words. At some point he had fallen into another dimension, it couldn’t be any simpler. His friends of ten years couldn’t have  _done that_ , it was just- “This is so sick,” he blurted, and he spun around to face Yann. “Did you know?”

At the moment it was the only thing that seemed to matter. He could survive Emma pulling some sick joke on him, he could survive Basile and Arthur helping her, but he wasn’t sure he could live with Yann, Yann of all people, being even aware of it.

Yann shook his head and a sparkle of relief fluttered in his stomach. “I just found about it all. I swear.”

He didn’t know. Yann didn’t know. He remembered now the face he had made, stunned and shocked, just before he stormed out the restaurant after Daphné blowing up-

“I can’t even-,” he huffed and ran a hand through his hair. “Was it some sort of joke to you? Strip someone naked while they’re wasted and just…  _put them in someone else’s bed_?!”

“I didn’t- I just thought that it could be the kick you guys needed.”

“This wasn’t your fucking business, Emma!,” he shouted again.

“Stop yelling at me, they’ve already done that since you left!”

“And what did you expect exactly?” The attack had come from Manon’s side, strangely enough. She had been quiet since the beginning, but the glance Lucas spared her was enough to admit to himself he hadn’t seen her this angry in years. “That they’d  _thank_   _you_? For God’s sake, you’ve got no idea what it feels like to be in this situation!”

“It’s Eliott we’re talking about!” Emma protested. “He’d never do anything Lucas doesn’t want to!”

“I can’t believe you even took the risk!” Manon snapped.

Emma turned to Lucas. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m  _sorry_ , I’ve been apologizing for hours. It was a stupid idea, it was wrong, I messed up. Now could you all please stop acting like none of you ever did anything wrong and regretted it afterwards?”

“As far as I’m concerned I’ve never done something like that, no, because I respect people and their boundaries,” Imane retorted, fuming. “You all gave me hell for that one bad decision I made regarding Manon and her relationship, and  _we were in high school_ , we were fucking  _kids_. You’re a freaking adult, Emma, you’re not sixteen anymore!”

Emma opened her mouth to protest but Lucas cut her off. “Does Eliott know?”

They all looked back at him, with a hint of surprise, as if they had forgotten it was about him — them. “He hasn’t returned yet,” Arthur said after a short while. “So, unless anyone texted him- or unless he just, I don’t know, remembers-”

“How did you even do it, anyway?” Lucas demanded.

Emma looked at the ground and Imane huffed an annoyed sigh. “Apparently, Eliott was upset because you hooked-up with some guy and went back to the hotel to drink himself out.”

“He  _did_ drink himself out, and he  _was_ pissed,” Emma protested. “Alex already told you, we brought him back to his room that night.”

“Okay, so then you saw me and you thought ‘oh that’d be fun’,” Lucas gritted.

The anger bubbled inside of him, threatening to spill. He was rarely if ever violent, and generally mostly towards himself rather than the others. He had punched walls before, broken his hand once in the process. And right now, well, right now he wanted to hit something. He wasn’t shaking, he wasn’t trembling — it wasn’t the same type of anger he had felt earlier than night. He didn’t want to throw a chair across the room, what he wanted was to punch a fucking wall, over and  _over_  again.

“We can’t keep talking about it now,” Yann said, his voice echoing weirdly as if from afar.

“Some people could really use a night to reflect on what they did,” Imane scowled, looking at Basile and Arthur in particular.

“It’s late and we have to be at the airport at 8h44 tomorrow morning.”

Everyone hummed in response and people started to motion around him.

“Tell me when Eliott comes back,” Lucas said as Arthur walked past him to head out.

His friend nodded. “Sure. Yeah. Anything you want.”

*

In the end, Imane offered to switch rooms with Lucas in order to spare everyone the trouble of a confrontation between him and Emma, but she had to promise Yann she wouldn’t strangle her in her sleep either before the decision was made. It was nearly 3 when Manon went to take a shower and prepare to bed, leaving Yann and Lucas alone in the room after Imane grabbed a few things and retired for the night.

“I don’t think I should even come to the wedding,” Lucas said, somber, staring at an invisible spot in front of him. “Just look how I managed to screw up this weekend.”

Yann snorted and shook his head. “If anyone ruined anything, it’s Emma. And Arthur. And Basile. You and Eliott didn’t do anything wrong.”

There was a silence, only disturbed by the sound of the water running in the bathroom.

“I’ve been an ass, right?” Lucas whispered. “To him.”

Yann seemed to ponder the question. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess so, in a way? I just- I don’t know, I just don’t understand you two anymore.” Lucas lifted tired eyes on him and his best friend looked a bit sheepish. “You two have been in this… weird place for years. I’ve lost count of how many times we all thought something was up between you two. And frankly, sometimes it looks like you and Eliott don’t know what’s going on either. For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think it’s doing anyone a favor to keep this situation going like that.”

Lucas let his look drop and fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “We never meant for it to become weird. For us it’s… it just  _is_. It’s just how it works.”

Or, rather,  _worked_. When Yann had left Paris after high school to study in Strasburg, he had gotten closer from Eliott, and at the moment it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. They had established a different routine, with different rituals, and Eliott had slowly filled Yann’s shoes and the part he was occupying in Lucas’ life up until then. When did things become ‘weird’, then? He had troubles figuring out. It wasn’t like most things they were doing together weren’t things he’d have done for Yann, and the other way around.

Back in high school, one of the things they had bonded over was their families, and the fact that both lived alone. No one really knew what it meant not to have a parent at home to cook dinner or someone to come and get you after a party. All their friends saw was that there wasn’t anybody to pester them about their BACs and their whereabouts, but they barely acknowledged the downsides of it all. Lucas’ dad had moved out of Paris a few months after separating with his mom, then the latter had been admitted into a psychiatric ward, for short stays at first, and then longer ones. Not long after Lucas was living in the flatshare and his dad got barely bothered enough to pay the rent, when he wasn’t simply forgetting about his only son at all. Eliott too was an only child, and although Lucas guessed his parents loved him, they loved their job even more. Mr. Demaury was an environmental and wildlife photographer and Mrs. Demaury a journalist, and they had both agreed, when Eliott was born, that at least one of them would remain in France to care for him; after Eliott turned 11, however, they started spending more and more time abroad, and their son more and more time at his grandmother’s.  _I don’t wish anyone to have a kid like me_ , Eliott had told him once after confessing all the rebellious shit he had pulled year after year, in hope that his parents would finally notice him.

“Aren’t you gonna ask?”, Lucas said after a while.

“Why you reacted the way you reacted?” Lucas nodded and Yann waved. “It doesn’t matter, what’s done is done. I just wish-” He paused and sighed, scrapping the back of his head. “I just wish you had told me, if it was bugging you. We promised to be honest to each other after the Chloé Disaster.”

The mention of it made Lucas’ skin prickle, like every time they talked about it – which, fortunately, didn’t happen often –, but this time for a whole other reason. It was funny, in a way, that two of the worst nights of his life both featured Eliott.

“I thought about it, you know,” Lucas said, almost like an afterthought. “About how I always manage to find myself in fucked up situations like these.”

The first time something even remotely close had happened to him was towards the end of their second year in high school, back when he was still very much in the closet. He had been dating Chloé for three, maybe four months, and objectively he had known the entire time that sex would come up at some point – probably sooner than later even. Up until late spring of that year, Lucas had managed to dodge he bullet at least thrice (including two weekends where Chloé’s parents had been out of town), and to save his reputation within the Gang by pretending that Chloé being a year younger, it was only natural that she wanted to wait a little before letting him in her panties.

It had worked tremendously.

At first.

Until someday Arthur told him that Maria, Chloé’s best friend, had just confessed that Lucas’ girlfriend was planning on doing the deed during the next party, which was exactly two days away. Breaking-up was out of the question, since it was the only thing the guys were talking about for the two days that followed, so his only strategy to counter any embarrassment to come had been to drink until he could barely stand. That’s the story of how he found himself peeled off his clothes, one Friday night, in a bedroom he didn’t know and with a whole bunch of teenagers right on the other side of the locked door partying like there was no tomorrow. He remembered feeling panicked and dizzy as he started making out with Chloé, and that her hands grew bolder and bolder, but it was about it. He faintly remembered someone banging at the door, and whenever he allowed his mind to go back to that night, there was always a flash of a memory, of Chloé huffing loudly and yelling to the person to fuck off. Then? A few seconds were missing, minutes even for all he knew, but then Eliott was there, looking furious and outraged, and the boys were there too, and that’s when he had passed out. The last thing he remembered from that night was Eliott’s cool hand on his face, and the sheepish explanations of Basile as Chloé was throwing a tantrum, and everyone within hearing distance gathered in the doorway to peer at what was going on.

He woke up the next morning with the worst hangover of his short life and his friends scattered haphazardly in the flatshare. Later that day, he had come out to them over breakfast, and almost instantly found himself wrapped in Eliott’s arms for the second time in a couple of hours only – it had never stopped after that. Afterwards, Eliott had confessed that he had his suspicions regarding Lucas’ motivations when it came to Chloé, and that he had tried to make peace with the idea that it wasn’t his place to intervene, but finding out that Lucas was barely conscious at all and that Chloé was planning on doing the deed regardless had just made him snap. Lucas had told him he could never hate him for that, and just like that Eliott had become a part of the group. Basile, Arthur and Yann had received an hour-long lecture about consent from him after they had dragged Lucas away from Chloé, Yann told Lucas he would always be able to confide about whatever was bugging him and profusely apologized for any joke he had done in the past, Lucas promised he would try his best to be honest, and soon the night was only referred as ‘the Chloé Disaster’ — and then not referred at all. 

The bathroom door being unlocked drove Lucas’ and Yann’s attention away, and Manon stepped in the room. Yann took it as his cue to leave and with a sympathetic pat on the back, he left after wishing them both a good night.

*

The night wasn’t good by any means, but Lucas already expected it, in complete honesty.

He turned and tossed so many times he had long lost the count, and when morning rolled around he felt the weight of two sleepless nights and too many fights in a row in the form of a knot between his shoulder blades, that no amount of stretching could possibly make up for. No one seemed to be in a talking mood over breakfast, particularly because Eliott had yet to show up after his exit at the restaurant, which was confirmed by Arthur when he told them he hadn’t slept in their room. Lucas didn’t like the thought of him spending the night with some fuckboy like that damn waiter, but he still rather liked to know Eliott somewhere with him than wandering around all night long.

Lucas went back to his original room to pack his stuff and Emma had the decency to leave him the fuck alone as he walked around and grabbed his things to shove them carelessly in his travel bag. All he wanted was to come home. He couldn’t stop himself from foolishly hope that maybe, just  _maybe_ , things would be okay again when they’d be back to Paris. They’d figure it out. They always had — not so much about them, because they had never fought this way, but everything else. If Yann had forgiven him for breaking him and Emma up when they were 16, he and Eliott could surely get through this too.

Nothing bad had happened. It was okay. Right?

“Lucas, you wanna come?” Nola asked warmly as the second cab they had ordered parked in front of the hotel. One had already left with a portion of their group a few minutes before, and she was holding the door as Yann and the driver were filling the trunk with their bags.

“I’ll take another one,” he said with a waving gesture, putting his earbuds back on.

“Alright, don’t miss the flight, okay?” Yann said from the sidewalk, using his dad voice. Lucas snorted and promised.

The second cab left shortly after. Alexia and Emma were smoking outside and Imane was on the phone with Sofiane, while Manon was reading a brochure, sitting close-by from Lucas. Time was flying by and soon the third cab showed up. Manon said she’d take the last one with Lucas and the girls hopped in.

“How did Daphné find out?” he asked after a while.  _Did you tell her_?

It seemed so stupid now. Such a detail.

“I didn’t tell her,” Manon said, slowly lifting her head up. “But I did tell Imane and she overheard. I wasn’t gossiping, I know it’s not an excuse, it’s just that I got worried, you looked so stunned and… I know, well, I know that Eliott means a lot to you. I know he’s a big part of your life.”

“Not big enough according to some.”

They fell back into silence and Lucas forced himself to zone out as the playlist on his phone kept going, just to force himself to stop counting the minutes. It worked so well that his heart skipped a bit when Manon elbowed him discreetly, pointing at the door of the lobby and the person opening the door.

_Eliott_. Lucas stood up from his spot and took off his earbuds just as Eliott’s eyes were landing on him. He looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes and his shoulders slumped.

“Hi,” Lucas said.

“Hey.” Eliott’s voice sounded flat, neutral, completely void of emotions.

Lucas chewed onto his bottom lip and let his gaze slip past his friend’s shoulder for a little while, if only for the sake of being able to focus. “I wanted to talk to you last night but-”

“Alright. Go ahead.”

The singularity of their exchange threw Lucas off and he found himself searching for his words. They had never really acted like that towards each other. It was all so polite and forced that it made him want to crawl into a fucking hole. He took a small inspiration. “You and I, we didn’t- we didn’t hookup. Emma and the guys, they pulled some sort of sick joke and-”

Eliott nodded, without any indication that he was anywhere near as upset as Lucas was upon finding out the night before. “Okay,” he interrupted, and Lucas’ voice trailed off. “Thanks for letting me know.”

And with that he walked past him.

He  _walked past him_.

Lucas was left staring at the void where Eliott had been standing not a second ago, before he spun around, eyes wide. “That’s it?”, he heard himself saying.

Eliott’s pace faltered in front of the concierge’s desk, and he turned back to face him. “What more do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said, “maybe why you didn’t seem surprised when Daphné blew up last night?”

There was a twitch of annoyance in Eliott’s face. “Oh, so now, you’re asking for honesty?”, he sneered. “Here’s what honesty looks like: you hurt my feelings. The problem is not that you shot me down, or that you yeeted out, it's how you treated me afterward. Like I was disposable, like I was some sort of perv who made you uncomfortable.”

“The  _situation_  made me uncomfortable,” Lucas protested. “I wasn't ready to treat it as a joke, like- like it wasn't a big deal.”

“Because you feel better having made a big deal of it?”

“No,” he said, earnest. “I freaked out. I woke up and I was feeling horrible and then I saw you and I just-I just yeeted out. I didn't even think about what would follow because I panicked. It's what I do.”

“Yeah when you freak out you get spikey, breaking news,” Eliott snorted humorlessly.

He winced a little and stared at his shoes. Maybe he deserved it, but if anything he had good hopes they could get through this. Things were fine. Things were going to be fine. He looked up at him sheepishly. “Can we just go back to where we were before leaving Paris?”, he huffed.

Eliott seemed to ponder the question, a chill running up Lucas’ spine when he eventually shook his head. “I don't think we can.”

“Why? You just said that I was wrong about making a big deal out of it,” he protested.

“It doesn't have anything to do with you and I maybe or maybe not hooking up!” Eliott snapped. “The problem is what you said last night. When you said that you'd have to deal with me and my depressed ass once again.”

_No, no, no, that’s not happening, no_ , Lucas thought, his heartbeat picking up. “Eliott-”

“All my life, I've felt like I was a fucking burden,” Eliott cut him off. “To my parents, to my family, to my friends, to my boyfriends, to my girlfriends. You've always been the only one who made me feel otherwise. And that's what made it so special with you!”

“It  _is_  special,” Lucas exclaimed, voice wavering a little. “I didn’t mean that you were burden, I just meant-”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant, that’s not what you said,” Eliott exclaimed, and his eyes looked so tired and so sad that Lucas felt like he could start crying any second now. “And now it’s just never gonna be the same again because that’s all I’m gonna hear.”

_It’s not doing anyone a favor to keep this situation going_ , Yann had said. Lucas’ look fell onto the tattoos on Eliott’s arms.  _Not afraid. Not afraid. Not afraid._ He was afraid. He was fucking terrified. Terrified to ask and terrified to find out what it all meant. If Eliott wasn’t able to go past what he had said, if he was never able to forgive him, if he was never able to trust him again, then it meant-

“So what? We should break up?” Lucas asked quietly. It didn’t matter if they were not a couple. It didn’t matter if they were not together romantically speaking. Lucas hadn’t felt his heart breaking so badly in a long while.

Eliott pressed his lips together, his gaze fluttering a little before landing on him. “I think we should,” he said. “I think we already did.”


	7. Chapter 7

_I think we already did._

The words sank and Lucas’ heart sank with them. His fingers tightened around nothing as Eliott’s eyes trailed over his face, and then just like that he was gone, leaving Lucas to stare at his back while he was retreating towards the elevator. His eyes started to sting painfully but he felt his blood boil at the same time, as if his body didn’t know very well how to handle that new rush of emotions.

He found himself following behind, feet moving forward before he really got behind what was happening. “You’re right,” he said.

If all was lost he deserved to be honest.

He deserved to let go of all the things he had been holding back for years now.

Eliott scooted around, and Lucas’ heartbeat picked up as he fought as hard as he could possibly do to keep his voice in check. “Our relationship _is_ a burden. It’s too much and I don’t think I can take it anymore, but it doesn’t have anything to do with you getting depressed,” he pressed on, speech rate going a tad faster. “What I can’t take anymore, it’s all those people who constantly walk over you and that you keep letting in anyway. They don’t deserve you. They don’t deserve who you are, they don’t deserve your kindness.”

Julien, Eliott’s first boyfriend after Lucille, considered that Eliott’s drawings and animal characters were a waste of time and potential and had no trouble to speak up his mind about them. The girl he had dated alongside that boy had dumped him shortly after the third one had left them, simply because she got bored from dealing with a heartbroken Eliott. Hell, even Eliott’s parents didn’t have the decency to respect his wish for privacy and had blatantly told a friend of their son’s they had never seen before that Eliott was psychologically unstable.

“I was mad. I still am,” Lucas said again, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips as he made an evasive gesture with his arms. “Seeing you with them makes me mad. Having to make room for them in our relationship makes me mad. It’s not- It’s not even because I don’t want to share you, I just don’t want to share you with people who don’t give a fuck, but here I am, doing that every three weeks or so, and I’m _tired_. It’s exhausting and it’s unnerving, and it has no _fucking end_ , and the worst part is that I just don’t know what my spot in all of this is. I find myself searching for words to explain your boyfriend or your girlfriend that you can’t deal with them at the moment, and I don’t care if it makes me look like the bad guy, I don’t care if it makes me look like I’m the one intruding in your relationships, I don’t care because that’s what you need from me, but all I want is- all I _wanted_ was to know what my goddamn place was.”

_Was I your best friend? Was I your found baby-brother? Was I just another part of your polyamory thingy?_ These were the questions he was dying to ask, but none made it past his lips, dying in his throat instead. He wanted to be honest but honesty was fucking hard and he didn’t know if he had any bit of energy left at this point.

“What am I for you?” he insisted again, and his voice cracked halfway through the sentence. _What was I, before you decided to cut me off?_

Eliott’s eyes fell to the side, his shoulders hunching slightly forward. “Does it count as something if I can’t name it?”, he eventually said, barely louder than a whisper.

Lucas’ eyes widened slightly and the lump in his throat grew ten times bigger. “You can’t name it,” he repeated flatly. “You wear you _fucking heart_ on your- you know what? Forget it. Nevermind,” he shook his head and took a step back. “Whatever it is, whatever it was, it’s over anyway.”

He fought the tears as he turned onto his heels and strode outside the lobby where Manon was waiting for their cab. Eliott didn’t follow him. He didn’t utter a word, he didn’t say anything at all, and Lucas didn’t stick around any more minute to wait for him to do so.

It wasn’t like there was anything else to add anyway.

*

It wasn’t 11 when they landed in Paris, and before noon when he got back home, crawling back there as if he had been ran over by a bus.

The ride to the airport had been deadly silent on Lucas’ part, but if anything he was glad Manon of all people had been there with him. She had seen him at his best and at his worst across the years; she knew exactly when to push and to stop. The way he shoved his sunglasses on his nose as soon as he exited the hotel lobby was enough of a signal for her apparently. She didn’t ask any stupid question, resisted the social pressure of providing useless comments and sweet nothings, and undertook the small talk with the taxi driver on their way to the airport without asking him to take any part in a conversation he barely understood anyway. If she spotted a few tears streaming down his cheeks, she didn’t say anything.

Two days turned into five, five days turned into a week, a week turned into two, then three. Life went back to normal, or what was supposed to be the new normal. Lucas wasn’t used to _normal_ , although the gap between him and his friends had lessened over the last few years — no, he was used to weird. The consequences of that weekend abroad hit him like a truck launched at full speed when he realized, halfway through the week following their return to Paris that yes, he did break up with Eliott. They were no longer friends. And if by any chance Eliott eventually decided to make his way back to the French capital city, they would no longer hang out together, let alone text each other until ungodly hours. You could decide to remain friends with the person you had stopped dating (although it was a performance he had never achieved himself), but how could you decide to downgrade a friendship out of the blue?

The prospect of having to establish a new paradigm for his and Eliott’s relationship started to occupy half of his time and to take over his sleepless nights, while the other half was more than busy stressing over the new responsibilities stemming from the fact that his boss on vacations for two weeks meant _he_ was in charge. The workload wasn’t all that heavier, even more so because of the summer holidays, but the tiniest task had him regularly stressed out more than usual. Needless to say, he had known better summers. A week exactly after their weekend in Spain, Lucas had the honor, as the future best man and an honorary member of the Cazas family, to be invited to the engagement dinner Yann and Nola hosted for their families. It was all good and delightful, really, until a particularly nosy aunt of Nola’s decided to set him up with Delphine, her niece’s very single maid-of-honor — the cherry on top.

The atmosphere within the gang was still a bit weird, leaving more than one of them uneasy, and it was the extended weekend of the 15th of August before Lucas heard about Eliott again — about, not _from_. As far as he was concerned, the last time they’d spoke was in the hotel lobby, and the last texts Eliott had sent from that weekend abroad still laid unreturned in his phone. Even his Instagram account had been dead silent since then, which hadn’t happened in a very, very long time, if ever.

“Emma wants to talk with you,” Yann said one evening. “Guess she wants to apologize again.”

Lucas glanced in the distance. “I don’t really want to,” he admitted with a sigh, “but I guess it’d look childish to keep her at arm’s length.”

His best friend studied him curiously. “I never thought you’d be…”

“What? The bigger man?” Lucas snorted.

“-I was gonna say _chill_.”

Lucas shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not gonna thank her either. Neither her, nor the guys. It was fucked up and it will take a while before I can consider myself over it.”

Yann took a sip from his beer. “No one asked you to laugh it off, it’s okay.”

“Yeah.” He paused and let his beer bottle roll between his fingers. “You were right. About me and Eliott. We didn’t know shit about what was happening. It was best for us to part ways.”

It still felt so incredibly bitter on his tongue. Eliott, who wore his heart on his sleeve, who fell for the first person who gave him attention and support and called it love after hanging out a couple of times and banging halfway through the first date, _that_ Eliott didn’t know how to acknowledge their relationship. _It’s not love, it never was_ , a voice repeated him every one and then, and after some time he had started believing it; it didn’t feel so alien. It just _was_ , period.

“I never said you two needed to break it off,” Yann countered. “All I said was that you needed to figure things out. Put a name on it once and for all.”

“Well, we did,” Lucas waved.

He didn’t want to talk about it anymore and they easily moved onto another subject, which turned out to be the current intern at Lucas’ firm. The girl, Bérénice, was always slipping out to smoke outside, particularly since their boss wasn’t there, which profoundly annoyed him. First, because it was rude as hell. Her job was to welcome hypothetical clients and to answer the damn phone. Second, because she knew very well that although _he_ was hired and _he_ was older and _he_ was in charge he wasn’t the actual boss and had no power to end her internship anytime soon. Third, because he had quit smoking two years ago and now he was dying to go back to it — _all_ because of her, obviously, and _not_ because of Eliott. She just had this ability to disappear in a blink, without a sound, and after nearly two weeks from that treat, Lucas was on the verge of strangling her more often than not.

That day was no exception. A Thursday afternoon overall quiet, the second to last day before his boss came back to work and hopefully knocked some sense into that stupid intern. Lucas had just gone to the archives to fetch a file he needed to complete a current work, only to find their shared office empty.

“Bérénice,” he called out, glancing around. “ _Bérénice_.”

The only answer was the humming of the traffic down the street and Lucas huffed in frustration. _That was it_. He was going to deck her, he decided, and he slammed the file onto his desk. It sent a paper sheet flying, and then slowly falling somewhere under the table. _Great._ He hated his life so freaking much. With another huff to himself through gritted teeth, he postponed rushing downstairs to grab _Bérénice_ by her ponytail (he wasn’t _violent_ , okay?) and bring her back to her table work, and squatted down instead to fumble for the paper sheet.

He rapidly unfolded it with a quirked brow, his heart skipping a beat as his eyes stumbled onto the familiar outline drawn in black ink on the sheet. It was a familiar-looking raccoon, sitting alone on a bed, his black pointy ears down and a sad look on his face. Four words were scribbled underneath.

_Three weeks without him_.

What the fuck was that thing doing here? It was obviously recent, he couldn’t even doubt that it might have been an old one that he would, somehow, have forgotten about. The drawing wasn’t there when he had gone to the archives, which meant-

“Hi,” a voice said somewhere in the office, and it startled Lucas so much that his head snapped up, bumping it loudly in the desk above him.

He scrambled his way out with a wince, still holding the drawing. His eyes slowly climbed up a familiar pair of sneakers. Familiar distressed dark jeans. _Familiar everything_.

“What are you doing here?” Lucas asked, a little bit thrown off, as he rubbed the spot on his head while Eliott looked at him sheepishly.

“I, uh, I told your intern to go grab a coffee,” he cleared his throat.

Lucas snorted. “And of course she listened to _you_.”

Unbelievable, he was really going to deck her. He stood up, and after glancing at the drawing once more, he held it out with a quizzical expression.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Eliott said, biting onto his bottom lip.

_I’m at work_ , Lucas nearly replied. Surely he could have found a better moment to drop by, like _lunch time_ for instance. Instead he just sighed and put the drawing down on the desk. “Alright. Okay, but hurry up, please.”

Eliott swallowed and his eyes fell onto the ground with a small ‘okay’ before he started looking up again. “I should have written what I wanted to say,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Lucas apparently. “I’m sorry. For the way things went down in Spain. For the things I said. I just- I just felt like it was a fucking nightmare. Like I was losing everything.”

Lucas let out a little huff. “It’s not _everything_. I’m not all you have.”

“You’re a big part of it,” Eliott said again, brutally honest, and Lucas hated the way his heart softened in his chest, as if he was leaning into an invisible touch. “I never realized it bothered you how much I was unloading onto you. I think… I think I didn’t want to see it.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the door hanging wide open. “The first time I saw you, I remember, you had that… that big smile on your face and you were laughing with the guys, and, I don’t know, I just felt like I wanted to keep it on forever.” He chuckled to himself, shaking his head without meeting his eyes. “I didn’t even know you and yet all I wanted was to protect you.”

Eliott’s eyes were impossibly soft, but there was a sad glint to them. They could go back to the way things were, couldn’t they? _I don’t want to_. He missed having Eliott around. He missed talking to him. He craved for his smiles and for his laugh and for his inspired comments on the beauty of this world out there. But he didn’t miss dealing with yet another fling of Eliott’s. For all he knew, there wasn’t anybody in the picture at the moment, which meant that Eliott had been single for at least a month, if not two. A prowess, if his dating records were any indication, which surely wouldn’t last much longer than that.

“You still haven’t given me a definition of what we are,” Lucas said.

“What we are, what we used to be- Does it matter?” Eliott asked. “Does it matter if that’s not what I want us to be?”

_This is so fucked up_. Lucas huffed and shook his head, feeling like his chest was constricting. How many times had he dreamt about Eliott confessing his undying love when he was 16, before wrapping his head around the idea that it’d never happen?

“You’re almost ten years too late,” he had a sad laugh. “I liked you. I always did. You were so cool and confident and obviously so fucking far out of my league. But then we talked, and you were _nice_ to me, and you made feel so at ease… I never wanted it to stop.”

“And why do you think I stuck around?” Eliott had a small, almost sheepish smile.

“That’s the problem. People stick around until they leave. They just come and go, and I didn’t want you to leave, ever.”

Eliott looked down. “But I left anyway.”

“But you left anyway.”

“So that’s why you never said anything?” Eliott’s voice sounded sad, and his face almost crestfallen, as if he had just heard a devastating news.

Lucas chuckled, still blinking furiously to keep the tears at bay. Why was he such a cry-baby? No one ever cried as much as he fucking did. You’d think that he wouldn’t have much more tears to shed after all this time but apparently he still had plenty. “Nearly ten years spent trying to bury it all and look at me now! A fucking _mess_.”

Lucas brought his hand to his face and bitterly wiped his eyes. He had never thought he’d start crying in the middle of his work office but apparently Eliott had so fucking much power over him than talking for five minutes was enough to turn him into a babbling, stupid mess.

“A beautiful mess,” Eliott said, soft, almost light-heartedly.

Lucas looked up to glare at him, but before he could even do so, he felt two arms wrapping around him and pulling him closer, closer, closer, until he was pressed into Eliott’s chest. The tension of the past few weeks seemed to lift off his shoulders as he inhaled deeply, losing himself completely in Eliott’s smell. It was familiar. Almost like home.

A small knock on the door made Lucas startle and Eliott and him pulled away from each other. Bérénice was standing in the doorframe of the office, looking vaguely smug. “Sorry to interrupt but, like, it’s already 2.30,” she said casually.

Eliott cleared his throat, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. “Right. I’ll just- I’ll just leave.”

Lucas stared, a little bit stunned and a lot emotionally drained, as Eliott threw a glance above his shoulder while walking out. A part of him couldn’t believe he’d just leave like that. He had no problem telling Bérénice to fuck off before, why would he be scared of her all of a sudden? What the fuck had just happened anyway? There had been tears and ‘I’m sorrys’ and a whole bunch of things he was fine with keeping to himself, and now- now _what_?

“Your boyfriend’s hot,” Bérénice commented, not looking remotely ashamed.

Lucas snapped out of his thoughts, but was a bit too lost at the moment to tell her to fuck off. With a mumble he rounded his work table and dropped himself on his desk chair, just as his phone was lighting up with a text notification. Lucas’ heart literally jumped forward in his chest when he read Eliott’s name. He had never opened a text so fast in his entire life.

_Boyfriends_

_That’s what I want us to be_

_I’d like that_

_I’d like that a lot_


	8. Chapter 8

Lucas didn’t have a great history with first dates.

Or, dates in general, for that matter.

Of course it hadn’t helped that his first two attempts at dating had been with representatives of the opposite sex he had no attraction for whatsoever, but even  _he_  could see that  _he_ was a part of the problem itself. He was only moderately romantic, to begin with. Big romantic gestures, pet names and emojis-filled texts weren’t his strong suit, and his friends had picked up on him enough for the past few years for him to be able to make peace with it. It just didn’t come naturally to him. Then, he didn’t really have anyone growing up to lay out the rules for him. The first guy he had gone out with had started to get cold feet after the fourth date, and it had been Manon who told him that maybe, just  _maybe_ , said guy considered they should have made out already by then.

“What if he doesn’t want me to kiss him?” Lucas had scoffed.

“Lucas, he didn’t go on four dates of just talking with you for nothing,” Alexia had huffed.

Obviously after that he had mostly gotten his shit together. When the next one came around, he didn’t repeat the same mistakes, but he was just so incredibly  _bored_  with the whole process that after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at dating and random making out sessions with guys who weren’t all that motivated once the alcohol was wearing off, he had just gone straight with hook-up apps.

(It might sound like he knew his business and was confident as fuck, but he wasn’t.)

(He really, really wasn’t.)

(He threw up before the guy arrived, the night he lost his virginity.)

(Which he had never told anybody.)

He had met two of his ex-boyfriends through those apps, had decided to give it a try with another one  _after_ hooking up with him during a college party, and had sex with a fourth one halfway through their first date — but that was another story. Dating wasn’t his thing, but it wasn’t the end of the world, was it?

“Lucas? You okay?”

Lucas snapped out of his thoughts, heartbeat picking up as if he had been caught red-handed doing something shameful. “What? Me? All good,” he stammered, forcing a smile as he looked back at Eliott.

They were sitting across from each other at a table, in the far back of a bar they were used to hang out, and coincidentally located in the same area as their former high school. Lucas was 100% at ease here. It wasn’t too crowded, the street wasn’t too loud, and the waiters weren’t overbearing. He had a beer. He had Eliott. Eliott Demaury. His boyfriend. Of six hours. Who didn’t seem too convinced by his little white lie, actually. “You’ve barely said two words since we got here,” he observed, looking rather concerned as he leaned forward a little.

He had always been so perceptive but right now it didn’t help him a lot. Lucas bit onto his bottom lip, fingers nervously playing with his drink. He made the glass roll between his hands, slowly to the left, slowly to the right, slowly, slowly,  _slowly_. “You’re going to laugh at me,” he muttered, casting his eyes away and keeping them onto the beverage.

“I promise I won’t.”

Lucas eventually huffed and shook his head. “I’m just- I’m just  _nervous_ , alright?”

It was a euphemism. He had been obsessing over that date ever since Eliott had formally asked him out over text shortly after leaving him a mess at his office earlier that afternoon, and Lucas deeply hated the new-found and absolutely  _not-needed_ confidence that his intern was apparently drawing from seeing him in this state of nervousness.

“Nervous,” Eliott repeated, eyebrows shooting up. “With  _me_?”

Lucas nodded, swallowing thickly. “Yes.” Eliott’s face made something funny, and the way he pressed his lips together made it quite obvious that he was holding back a laugh. Lucas’ eyes widened under the offense. “See? I told you, you’d laugh at me!”

A chuckle made its way past Eliott’s lips despite his best efforts. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he said, laughing, as Lucas retaliated with a crumpled napkin thrown to his face that he had no trouble catching. “We’ve been hanging out for eight years. I think we’ve rehearsed tonight a bunch of times already.”

“It’s different,” Lucas sighed, and he rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “We’ve never been on a first date. And I suck at first dates. You know that.”

That was the other problem. Eliott knew everything there was to know about him. Every little details, some Yann wasn’t even aware of. Every single thing that Lucas was willing to share, Eliott knew about it already. What was he supposed to do? What were they supposed to talk about? His heart jumped up his throat when Eliott stood up, startling as the chair rattled on the ground.  _That’s it. I’ve fucked up with Eliott too_ , he thought in panic. But instead of leaving, like the irrational part of his brain was stressing him about, Eliott simply grabbed his chair and set it down next to Lucas, before sitting down again. He stared at him a little taken aback, and when he searched his brain for some snarky comment to make, he found none. Eliott’s eyes crinkled slightly as he smiled at him, and Lucas’ heart melted in his chest. It had been a consistent feeling for eight years, and his first instinct was to try and kick it off, fight it back, struggling to make it die down.

_He’s your boyfriend now._

Easier said. There was a tap on his shoulder that made him startle, and Lucas’ head snapped to the side, just to realize that Eliott had slid an arm behind his back, on the edge of his chair, and was just trying to get his attention. “Are you going to jump up every time I touch you now?”, Eliott enquired with a quirked brow, laughing, but Lucas noticed a vague strain to it that made him swallow thickly and avert his eyes.

“I’m sorry, I’m not used to it,” Lucas mumbled, “but I want it,” he added quickly just as Eliott was opening his mouth to talk. He realized he might have put a little bit too much of emphasis when the waiter who was walking by with a tray granted him a quizzical expression.

Eliott started laughing, this time earnestly, and Lucas drunk in the sight. “Nice, cause I want it too. Which we already agreed on, if I remember correctly.”

“I’ll stop freaking out if you stop playing the smart ass.”

Eliott smirked at him, albeit softly. Their shoulders were touching, and the backrest of his chair was a mere pretext for Eliott’s arm to be placed where it was. He leaned in a little bit more. “I’ll be honest, I’m kinda freaking out too.”

“Really?” Lucas wondered. He didn’t know if it was the feeling of having Eliott so close that was starting to sink in or the confession only, but he felt himself relax, and before he knew it, his hand landed onto Eliott’s leg. He had the merit of not jumping up like Lucas had, but he startled a little bit, which made Lucas grin. “Now who’s the one jumping?”

Eliott scoffed. “That’s unfair.”

Lucas quirked a brow. “Why?”

“Because I wasn’t warned.”

“You didn’t warn me either.”

“But I always touch your shoulder,” Eliott pointed out, and Lucas felt a giggle bursting out slowly and inexplicably at the offended expression on his face.

 _Oh screw it_ , he decided as he let it out, soon joined by Eliott. It was so stupid, really. There was absolutely nothing funny about it. It wasn’t any funnier than kids playing tag, it was just  _stupid_. But it was stupid with Eliott. And right now he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

He didn’t startle when Eliott’s hand covered the one he had kept on his thigh.

Eliott didn’t startle when Lucas laced their fingers together.

He was right. It really wasn’t all that different.

*

“You don’t want to know, you’ll think I’m a creep.”

“I do!  _Come_   _on_ ,” Lucas insisted, almost whining at this point. “How did you know it was me?”

Eliott sighed and shook his head fondly. They had left the bar a few hours ago and were now huddled up on Lucas’ couch, slightly tipsy on the couple more beers left in his fridge. It was certainly not enough for them to be even remotely drunk, they were just in a good mood and a good place. The nervous train wreck he was earlier that day had been replaced by a bolder and definitely more relaxed Lucas, and right now there was no other place on Earth he’d rather find himself, sitting five mere centimeters away from Eliott with his legs draped over his lap. It was around 8, when the bar was starting to get crowded and loud and fussy and that Lucas was beginning to feel the buzzing atmosphere getting to their quiet, happy bubble, that Eliott had suddenly bolted up from his seat with Lucas trailing behind.

They had already gone through the touchy subjects of their lives alongside but without each other for a certain amount of time at this point, but it hadn’t been nearly as overwhelming as he thought it’d be. They had gotten there eventually, Eliott had said at one point, and he couldn’t agree more.

Lucas had confessed that he fell for him at first sight but spent a significant amount of time to try and make it go away, partly because Eliott looked far too out of his league. Eliott had admitted that if he had been ready to date a boy after that party on the school’s grounds, he’d have broken up with Lucille for him without a blink. They had discussed that one time Eliott had been violent towards one of Lucas’ exes who had been a douchebag to him, and the one time Lucas had snapped and told a girlfriend of Eliott’s she had no place in his life. They had talked about Eliott’s fear of hurting Lucas and crush him under his problems, and of Lucas’ conviction that he wasn’t enough for people to stick around. It was around that moment that the explanation of it all seemed to unfold. It wasn’t a realization that he had abandonment issues, he just had never expected Eliott to have some of his own. Lucas was so afraid to be left hanging that he rather wanted to be alone, and Eliott was so afraid to be alone that he rather wanted to risk being left hanging. They were just the two sides of the same coin, and it didn’t seem so alien, all of a sudden, that it had taken them eight years to figure this out. The real surprise was that they had ended up doing so eventually.

One thing leading up to another and the trip to Barcelona was brought up, yet another thing they had ended up sweeping under the rug in some way. There wasn’t much left to discuss, since they had already addressed much of the problems from that fucked up weekend through their tearful apologies, but there was still one thing that kept bugging Lucas ever since — why Eliott didn’t seem surprised one bit when Daphné had blown up their secret, barely blinking at all while Lucas’ world was crashing down.

“I smelled you,” Eliott mumbled, looking away. Lucas stared at him, taken aback, prompting Eliott to elaborate. “In case you forgot I’m the one who bought you your cologne, idiot. It was all over the pillow you slept on and it’s usually all over my hoodies too whenever we’re together, it’s really not that hard to recognize.”

“You mean whenever you just can’t help yourself but touch me?” Lucas grinned.

“Exactly,” Eliott responded, gazing at him with these insane grey eyes that Mother Nature had gifted him with. “Should I apologize now?”

“Nah, I think we’re good.” Lucas huffed in a laugh.

“You really thought we had sex together?” Eliott wondered.

Lucas shrugged. “I blacked out. And I was naked.” He might have been told by Arthur, Basile and Emma that he had puked on himself and was the one who got rid of more clothes they had intended him to, but it still felt embarrassing as fuck.

“I wasn’t,” Eliott countered casually, making Lucas glance at him with a cocked eyebrow. “I still had my underwear on. Does that mean you didn’t even sneak a glance?”

Lucas’ cheeks reddened, but it was hard to pinpoint if it was because of the tease or because he felt like such a complete  _idiot_. No, he most definitely hadn’t  _seen_  Eliott’s boxers. Maybe it’d have saved the both of them a lot of trouble, but the point of freaking out was that he was too paralyzed to think things through the way he’d do it in other circumstances. He couldn’t quite remember all the feelings he had experienced that morning, although he could easily recall the fear of losing everything he had with Eliott, but he had come to admit to himself that a part of it all was frustration — the frustration of maybe, just maybe, having sex with Eliott and not even remembering it.

“There was the comforter,” Lucas retorted. “I wasn’t just gonna lift it up so that I could sneak a glance at your ass and  _then_  yeet out.”

Eliott laughed, dazzlingly beautiful. “Fair enough,” he said, resting his head on the edge of the couch.

Outside the night was creeping up and they had been too lazy to go flip the lights on, so instead they just remained there, in the half-darkened place, golden sparkles reflecting in Eliott’s eyes from the streetlamps outside and blue shadows cast all over the white walls. The buzzing sound of the intercom made them both startle and Eliott chuckled when Lucas’ hand flew to his chest.

“Fuck I skipped a beat,” he groaned.

“Must be the pizza. I’ll go get it,” Eliott said, ever so chivalrous, and he lifted Lucas’ legs off lap to stand up.

If Lucas’ eyes trailed over his back and then his ass as he walked to the front door, it wasn’t anybody’s business but his own. He had the right to look at his boyfriend’s ass.

 _Boyfriend_.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck,  _fuck_. Eliott was hitting the button of the intercom and talking to the delivery guy when Lucas bolted from the couch to fumble in the two drawers of his coffee-table. Eliott was his boyfriend. He was no longer his closest buddy. He rummaged through the few magazines stacked in there, an old tv remote, various pairs of earbuds that weren’t even working anymore, then he found the plastic box he was looking for and exhumed it from the deep end of the second drawer. It was a box of candles, the small flat type (the box read ‘tea light candles + containers’), and he hastily ripped it open, setting a couple here and there on the coffee-table. Manon had bought them with him a lifetime ago.  _You’ll thank me for having those at your place someday_ , she had said with a shrug.

Well, she was right. He was going to charm the shit out of Eliott, Lucas decided. He grabbed Eliott’s lighter and started lighting them up one by one. The second to last proved to be quite resistant. For some stupid reason the wick was shorter, and it was only with extreme difficulty that he managed to light it up — at the cost of his thumb.

“Ouch, fucking shit,” he complained to himself, hastily setting the container back on the coffee-table and dropping the lighter.

“What are you doing?” Eliott enquired as he came back with the pizza box, frowning.

“Setting myself on fire,” Lucas groaned with a small wince, then he gestured at the candles. “I wanted to, uh, make it more romantic.”

Eliott set the pizza box on the coffee-table. “Kids aren’t supposed to play with lighters, Lucas.”

“Fuck  _off_.” It wasn’t all that bad, he assumed as he looked at the red spot, but it didn’t stop Eliott from dragging him to the kitchen and put his hand under the tab while he chucked open the cold water.

Being romantic sucked, he snorted to himself as he dried his hand on the dish cloth Eliott handed him. It took him an extra second to realize Eliott was biting back a laugh. “Are you laughing at me?  _Again?_ ”

“You really are a disaster,” Eliott chuckled, and Lucas’ breath caught in his throat as Eliott’s hand reached out, his fingers caressing his cheek.

He swallowed thickly. “Well,” he said, still holding the dish cloth, “apparently I’m your disaster now.”

Eliott smiled, and brushed their noses together.

It was soft and tender, and when Lucas leaned up, and their lips met, and Eliott’s arms wrapped around him, and that he was pulled closer, and his hands flew to Eliott’s hair, and the world stopped, and fucking fireworks exploded everywhere, and a maddening feeling of freedom and fulfillment washed over him — he most, most definitely did  _not_ startle.

He had waited those for eight fucking years, after all.


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**September 2019**

 

**LUCAS**

**Today** 17:22

I think Imane’s onto us

why, because we’ve both been texting ever since we got here?

… i miss you.

i miss you too

but we’re right about this

it just makes it seem like we’re hiding something shameful

we aren’t baby. you suggested it and i’m all in

they need to realize it was fucked up

or else they’ll ask us to thank them yeah i know how they work

💕💖

💕💖 

 

**October 2019**

 

**BABY 💕🦔**

**Today,** 10:57

so

i got 6 missed calls and 3 texts from Yann and Nola

4 missed calls from Manon

1 text from Imane

277 notifications from the groupchat with the guys

jesus

wait I’m not done

128 notifications from the groupchat with the girls

3 texts from Mika

and 1 text from my dad but i don’t really care for that one

they went all in, didn’t they?

what pic did you choose again?

you didn’t see it???

i don’t even have the 3G here lucas

the selfie from the other morning

where you’re sleeping on me

lucas we’re naked on that picture??????

relax i cropped it right below your shoulder

at best they just see us shirtless in bed, shocker

oh fuck my phone is starting to blow up

i gotta go back to work, the studio’s off, remember?

no problem

i’ll call you at lunch

i love you

i love you too

 

**Today** , 11:31

 

so i got 7 texts et 2 calls from Idriss

3 texts from Sofiane

a bunch of texts from Alexia

2 calls from Yann and Nol’s

and well, the other 277 notifs from the boys

oh and i think Mika was trying to send a message with that graphic picture he sent

like shovel talk or something

but i didn’t quite get it

ahun

fuck, we’re official

do you regret?

never in a million years

can’t wait to see you

💙

💙

 

**October 2019**

 

  


 

**November 2019**

 

  
****  
**BABY 💕🦔**

**Today** , 02:44

Missed call: this person/number called at 02:44 on 18th Nov but left no message.

Missed call: this person/number called at 02:49 on 18th Nov but left no message.

 

**Today** , 03:28

Missed call: this person/number called at 03:28 on 18th Nov but left no message.

 

**Today** , 07:58

hey

eliott i’m sorry

pls don’t be mad

i was drunk :(((

that’s literally the problem

you’ve got not damn filter when you’re drunk, Lucas

he was twice your size!

yeah i’ve noticed

can i call you?

not now, i’ll get in the subway in a minute

please don’t be mad at me

i already feel bad enough

hungover?

yeah

but i hurt you on top of that

don’t be such a drama queen

i just don’t want my boyfriend to be beaten up, is that too much to ask?

anyway i gotta go

i’ll call you at lunch

i love you…

i love you too idiot 🙄💕

 

 

**January 2020**

 

 

**March 2020**

 

*****

 

**BABY 💕🦔**

**Today** , 14:16

just got back from lunch

how was it?

boring.

he’s trying super hard, but like, too hard

it pisses me off

but your stepmother looks like a good influence, don’t you think?

this isn’t modern family

just because he tries now means i’ll forget how shitty he was for years

i know baby

i miss you

i miss you too

 

**Today** , 15:11

come downstairs

why?

because i’m freezing

and i’m supposed to be on a smoking break

YOU DID NOT

*

 

**June 2020**

 

 

**December 2020**

 

 

**July 2021**

 

 

**August 2022**

 

**BABY 💕🦔**

**Today** , 16:38

 

bby i need your help

?

yann wants me to pick a tie

i hate ties

pls save me :((

everybody will wear a tie, it’s a wedding

you’re the best man come on

just pick a blue one to match your eyes

i already picked a blue suit

THE blue suit??????

👀😏

you want me to die or what???

trust me i want you safe and sound

and in shape

alright pick a grey one

you sure?

it’s gonna match my suit

and my eyes

and it goes well with the bed headboard

you didn’t just-

ELIOTT

👀😏

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for keeping up with this story and dealing with the angst 🤧💕  
> the feedbacks have been wonderful and i can't thank you enough 🤗 i'm @demaury on tumblr so feel free to drop by and talk!


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